Judean pillar figurines are one of the most common ritual objects from Iron II Israel. These small terracotta females have received a great deal of scholarly attention, appearing in discussions about Israelite religion, monotheism, and women's practice. Yet the figurines are sti…
Judean Pillar Figurines regularly appear in discussions about Israelite religion, monotheism, and female practice. Erin Darby uses Near Eastern texts, iconography, the Hebrew Bible, and the archeology of Jerusalem to explore figurine function, the gender of figurine users, and t…
This thesis considers ritual as it was used by the Classic Maya at Baking Pot, Belize, during the site’s abandonment circa 800–900 CE. Ritual was deeply woven into the daily life of the Classic Maya. This study reviews Classic Maya rituals and problematic deposits in order to ad…
The subject of this dissertation is a corpus of 203 Bronze Age anthropomorphic figurines recovered from various archaeological contexts at Umm el-Marra, Syria. Anthropomorphic figurines are an important subject of study because they are common in the archaeological record and ye…
Terracotta figurines with articulated or movable body parts represent a class of objects common to most parts of the Greek and Roman world during all periods. Such figurines existed in Greece from at least the 10 th century BC, became popular in Cyprus from the 8th century BC on…
This dissertation investigates Iron II Judean pillar figurines and their place in Judean ritual. First, the project identifies major trends in the interpretation of figurines and evaluates them using ancient Near Easter texts, archaeological context, the Hebrew Bible, and iconog…
High infant mortality and short female life span threatened Israelite women, who were respected as household administrators and educators. The concept of a personal god first observed in second millennium BCE Mesopotamian texts and house shrines involved apotropaic measures agai…