Paper short abstract:

As a technology of transformation, art provides a means of moving between categories in the material world and altering ontologies. In the context of prehistoric Eurasia, an analysis of human and animal imagery shows that objects were routinely used to reposition individuals within a social world.

Paper long abstract:

Art, as a broad material category, encompassing both parietal and portable objects, plays a key role in understandings of the world. In the context of later prehistoric Eurasia its role as a technology of transformation seems particularly clear.

At both ends of Eurasia, sculptural depictions of humans appear to be dominated by the objects they wear or carry, which are depicted in great detail while human features are left stylised and simplified. Animals and humans, in both representations and reality, are given supernatural features or transformed to create caricatures, distorted or hybridised versions, which no longer fit into the categories of the physical world.

In this paper we explore this later prehistoric obsession with transformation, visible most clearly in the fixation of the moment of transformation in art, and the manipulation of art as a tool for repositioning individuals within their social world.