 At the very beginning I would like to thank Dragoj Georgiu for his invitation for this nice session focused on anthropomorphism and various perspectives of anthropomorphism. I hope I will contribute with some of these directions in which anthropomorphism is studied lately because it's not a topic that was studied decades ago. So it's becoming a current topic that I think will inspire many people to think more about human representations or something that looks like human in prehistory or in some more modern times. So quite often when we talk about Neolithic we are talking about domestication and it mainly regards domestication of plants, domestication of animal but almost no one is talking about the domestication of human body. I mean not in a physical way but more in conceptual and symbolic way and we have evidence especially in the Neolithic Balkans in the period between 7th millennia until middle 5th millennia that the Neolithic farming communities were producing so much of human representations and it's sort of explosion of human representations in 2 millennia and this absolutely considers a novel perspective of human body in the Balkans because previously in Paleolithic or Mesolithic there are no human representations in the Balkans in spite of Central Europe or Eastern Europe where we can find a lot of human representations modeled or painted or engraved but in the Balkans there were no representations at all so suddenly in the beginning of Neolithic there are a lot of figurines and different anthropomorphic items that were quite dynamically and often used in this first farming society. So in this sense we can say that actually the anthropomorphism was one of the main concepts which was also incorporated in the Neolithic Balkans and absolutely considers the novel perspective of human body or the importance of human being within the society. So this is a map of Europe with a part of Neolithic Balkans so as I said this considers period of the middle of 7th millennia until the end of Neolithic in some regions in the middle of 5th millennia so there are a lot of discussions about domestication and Neolithic process in the Neolithic we are not going now in that direction but these discussions or sometimes arguments about the domestication of plants and animals are different. There are some archaeology that they want to imply that domestication of animals or some animals, some plants happened in some parts of the Balkans but there are more arguments that most of these plants and animals are coming from Near East that is Anatolia and from southwestern Turkey they were introduced to the Balkans. So that's why when we often talk about domestication we consider this kind of movement of biological, let's call them items into the Balkans as something new. This also considers the way of living. Before Neolithic most of the societies were living in tents or some kind of simple dwellings but with the reduction of Neolithic there was absolutely life within, more fixed and concrete buildings mainly of daub so that's why we can say that actually the life or the houses themselves were sort of domestication and bringing people to one point and making them living together because of some environmental perspective they had mainly based on availability of plants and their harvesting. So in these terms we can say that also the houses themselves become domesticated or they were modified and transformed from what was before in the Neolithic Balkans into something absolutely different and made of really fixed and concrete material that is daub. Clay was also something new, I mean there are a lot of interpretation about clay used in upper Neolithic in the central Europe some attempts of making figurines of clay and also clay used for covering the baskets in upper Neolithic in central Europe but in the Balkans there was no clay used at least for production of vessels and human representation so we have sudden introduction to some material that was also essential for making human representation so in the early Neolithic and especially in the middle Neolithic there are thousands and thousands of human representation produced so a lot of figurines were made which is a new practice in the Balkans as I said before so which means that actually the material itself was sort of domesticated so it was introduced for the first time and that's how it was intensively used in producing vessels and human representation so talking about human representation we now can think more about the concept of anthropomorphism or I would rather say anthropocentrism because in the Neolithic as I said there are thousands of human representations that indeed induce some kind of focus on human body and using human body as a reference for something we still can discuss what was this reference for but for surely there was something new happening in the Balkans and it put the human body as a center of it there were also animal representations but in many of the sites where I studied the material most of the representations were human but in some other sites in the Balkans you can also see frequently animal representation so that's why when we speak about anthropomorphism we cannot say that generally anthropomorphism was present all over in equal way but in some societies we see that the communities were preferring more human representation than animal representation and there are some sites or some villages which were also producing more figurines than animal figurines than human figurines so that's why I will assert this concept of anthropocentrism in some parts of the Balkans where we find a lot of figurines and these figurines are in the beginning more stylistic initial stages of Neolithic but in the medieval Neolithic we see a lot of in terms of Neolithic aesthetics, realistic figurines and the diversity of figurines which are most frequently maybe focused on female body but also there are a lot of communities and settlements that much more produce bodies without any gender indication so there are also a variety of how the body was understood and which gender would be asserted in some communities so we see this kind of introduction of human body into the Neolithic societies as something that doesn't rely on one general concept but there are different concepts and probably different ideas should be proposed or manifested throughout this object although for decades the figurines were understood as assertion of female body but we must say that there are also thousands of let's call them asexual bodies presented in the Neolithic and they absolutely consider some different ideas than these figurines that are on the slide now but one of the most essential concepts which was introduced in the Neolithic Balkans is hybridism actually combining human body with something else so using human body as a reference was something that was produced in the Neolithic household so whatever was produced in the Neolithic that was not present before in the Mesolithic or Paleolithic was in a way symbolically explained through the human body and we will see a couple of examples of it so whatever you find in the house involving the house itself was actually explained through the human body as they are anthropomorphic house models anthropomorphic vessels, stamps, oven models and different items that were actually anthropomorphized and they were originally used for some other purposes which were also introduced in the Neolithic they were not so common before we know that the idea of hybridism as we saw in the first presentation today comes from the upper Neolithic in Europe it mainly considers involvement of human body with the animal body but in the Neolithic we have something new I mean as I told you the clay was introduced the clay vessels were introduced for the first time so there are attempts to explain the vessels as a human body and these are just a few selections of anthropomorphic vessels that are a high number not in the early Neolithic but in the middle Neolithic especially in the late Neolithic when society changed significantly towards something else so besides these anthropomorphic vessels that are based on this combination of human body and a vessel as some unique sort of container and something that still reflects in our own terminology of vessels when we are describing the vessels today so we can say that this concept of anthropophizing a new item in the Neolithic was also broadened in different objects so we can see smaller objects with maybe similar function as vessels but they are not so, how to say, practical for such use so some of their helgists are considering them as ritual items some as children toys but anyway we see different types of vessel that has human body features also stamps were something new in the Neolithic they were mainly used for putting some decoration on a soft tissue so some of the stamps they are not many but some of the stamps had human body so we can see that actually with the human body they wanted to imprint something onto the clay or maybe textile or maybe human skin or maybe dough on the bread that was baking afterwards also besides these sort of representations of human body we can see nothing high number but there are a couple of models of ovens that are represented as human body as well so these are common for Serbia, not so much in other regions but they are oven models that actually has human features and they also imply this kind of understanding of oven as a human body that doesn't consider any society but some of the societies that had this idea also we have to consider some practices of burials that were performed in the Balkans and in Hungary as well within the oven so which means that a different symbolic concept was given to oven not only by its representation but also by practices that were performed within the buildings, within the houses and finally we have these kind of house models, anthropomorphic house models that are actually lanterns, big lanterns, some of them are 40 centimeters high and they actually assert the essential idea of the Neolithic communities that the house was identified with human body and it was in some areas more apparent identification of house with human body in some areas was mostalized as this idea was progressing and spreading but anyway in the core of this idea is that human body is actually identified with house because it was something new, I mean the fixed houses were for the first time built in the Neolithic especially with this material the dove which was burned maybe before or most likely after the end of the life of the house so that's why probably it becomes much more apparent object or some material that was visible and present within the community so that's why those that build these houses were actually identified with houses so we don't know who these houses represent or these house models represent but they are definitely commemorative because most of these items are lanterns there are evidences of smoke onto them so they were representing some important individuals maybe those that build the houses, maybe some ancestors, maybe some date don't know but anyway they are associated with someone important so now the question appears whether these houses actually represent someone as individual or they represent houses as a human so there is vice versa question whether the house was anthropomorphized or someone important was how to say house architectureized so it's really interesting concept that actually appeared in the Neolithic Balkans and that was going to the core of this idea of domestication of human body in a symbolic way I'm sure if young Hodder when he was writing his book Domestication of Europe knew about these objects I'm sure that he would put this one in the front cover because it goes quite well to his concept of domus and agrius and how actually the Neolithic communities identify their bodies with the function of the house or they wanted to explain the house throughout their bodies and not only the house but everything which was inside as I showed you before you saw anthropomorphic house models anthropomorphic stamps so many other anthropomorphic items were produced also anthropomorphic figures, thousands of them so we can see that actually whatever was produced in the Neolithic was anthropomorphized in a way so that's why the concept of anthropomorphism is rather anthropocentrism than something else and this involves especially the hybridism as something that's a highlight or strengthen this idea of becoming human or being a human within the farming society thank you