 Κάθε day, on my Facebook wall, are popping up quite a few proud announcements of New Zoom renovation projects, new exhibitions and initiatives accompanied by thousands of likes. Consequently, everything is going fairly well in the New Zealand. In the following 15 minutes, I would like to draw my dislike, or at least my concern sign, using as case study Greek archaeological museums and prehistoric figurines. If I were concerned with their history, my task would be not so demanding. Although archaeological museums in general seem to evolve, figurines exhibits have always been and still are the same. However, figurines are not all the same. They adapt to the material, they embody the sensibility and skill of their manufacture, they reflect the randomness of a handmade artifact and they engulf social variety, etc. Consequently, an exhibit that would follow and highlight a typology of figurines would seem reasonable, although it could be considered old fashioned, bearing in mind outdated, positivistic, mechanistic or pedantic classifications. However, perhaps a typology based on criteria that has suggested in contemporary research can topple typical evaluations of museum visitors who favor naturalistic to schematic figurines and consciously following obsolete interpretations which consider the latter as childish examples of a declining art. Πεσονally, I would be very much tempted by the idea of a display correlating these types with the ways of prehistoric settlement is evolving across time, or the mechanisms a prehistoric community develops to manage collective memory. And I really don't mind if such a correlation is just a scholar's hypothesis and has not a unanimous consent. A maybe less risky idea is the museological handling of an issue only present in archaeological studies, gender identification and the significance of female figurines' abundance. We could use figurines to reflect on the many faces of prehistoric women or rather the many images we construct for prehistoric women today. Πresent here as immature adolescent, mother, sexual subject, servant elderly, passive reproductive tool, dynamic community member, pursuing her social role in gestures, body shape and indiscernible incisions on the figurines' malleable clay flash. I realized that such an approach is working on a dangerous interpretive path and I'm not putting it on the table carried away by a feminist enthusiasm. What I have in mind is that in this way we can deconstruct simplistic generalizations that dominate and reproduce sometimes hysterically out there. In other words, it is absolutely meaningless to put in the corner of a glass case this miniscule figurine that according to Gibutas represents the goddess of birth. On the contrary, we can put it at the center and use it to reexamine the mythic iconography of prehistoric society because I contend that the museum should take the initiative for the debate if we want to overturn the image of a female pantheon reflection of an ideal material health prehistoric society. A concept dominating out there although strongly questioned by us. Toys, dolls, grave goods, amulets, concubines, communication tools, votive offerings, identity marks, the list of widely accepted or doubted ideas for the use of figurines is quite long. I don't want to evaluate them but I would like to use them. The combination of ancient objects with contemporary ones is not unusual when we want to indicate conceptual correlations or use. We usually put behind a clay wall the photograph of a woman spinning. What if we put behind the aforementioned small figurine, a woman giving birth. We are afraid that young children would be shocked. Then why the idea of contemporary toys and Barbie dolls is not adopted since many scholars believe that figurines could be agents imposing and reproducing social norms. Then again we can put the impressive female figurine on an altar unless we are afraid through the furious local priest. Or we can put figurines with long necks next to a contemporary vibrator if we believe that they were prehistoric sexual aids. Unless our contemporary stuffiness doesn't allow it. Taking into consideration the limits of a public museum I'll make another more conservative proposal. We can put the stratophagic female figurine next to the flint blades and the carbonized seeds if we think that it expresses a wish for a rich harvest. My point is that since figurines are inextricable elements of the multifaceted prehistoric life and I believe there is no doubt about that they should be treated as any other object in museum exhibition and not as it is almost always the case isolated as pockets of spiritual meditation in the frame of a mundane society that is mechanically surviving or and I'm not sure which is the worst as archeologically unexplored islands surrounded by a calm ocean of interpretive certainties. I suppose that such an approach is difficult since there are so many ideas, some of them contradicting about the use of figurines which moreover can hardly be correlated with other material remains and mainly because most of them are not safely supported by archeological data. Let's then focus on archeological data. Let's take the figurines out of the glass case and let's show them dirty, broken and worn among rubbish and debris or on the contrary intact as groups of in meaningful context. Let's not underestimate the museological significance of things that every archeologist knows very well. The fragmentation of the remains, the ambiguity of data, the tyranny of a disturbed layer, the differences and similarities we observe even if we cannot decipher, in other words, the raw material of archeological interpretation. And if this seems weird inside the immaculate museum halls, I have another idea. It is well known that every object introduced in a museum is perceived by the visitor as an artistic masterpiece. Albeit how problematic such a perception is, it's not irrelevant to enhance the artistic value of figurines and underline what a prominent Greek prehistorian calls artistic orgasm and expression of exhilaration. But then we have to try a little harder and use something more inventive that well-organized glass cases. My problem is not glass case itself, but the visual relation it establishes. Figurines more than most archeological material constituted a strong visual stimulus for prehistoric people. Therefore, it is fair enough to stress their visuality. However, our aim should be to show how they were seen by prehistoric people and what these people were seeing on them. If the latter is almost eutopic, since we belong to a completely different regime, it's worth exploring the first one. There is no point to impose on figurines a specific stance overlooking that most of them do not have some sort of base, at least one that we can identify as such. There is no need to turn to discrete crutches to solve a problem that most probably prehistoric people did not have. Figurines constitute par excellence mobile artifacts and this mobility was essential for the fulfillment of their role in prehistory. Therefore, I wonder why would try so hard to nail them as if they were Roman statues. They constitute three-dimensional images and this three-dimensionality was essential for their significance. Therefore, I cannot understand why we are determined to offer just one view to the visitor. Moreover, the static figurines give to the visitor the impression that they were passive recipients of a gaze, although many scholars reject such an approach. Small, suffocated in huge museum halls and crowded class cases, worn within discernible details, are incapable to persuade the visitor that in prehistory they have been acting as agents for identity constitution, in position negotiation or subversion of social perceptions and behaviors. It is exactly the small size that makes me wonder about the results of a complete inversion of scale. On the other hand, figurines as tangible objects are not mere visual stimuli. They are material bodies that we can grasp, harry in our palm filled with our fingertips. Some years ago in UK visitors were wondering an exhibition holding a small clay figurine made for the occasion by a contemporary potter. It's not a bad idea as long as we will never get the permission to give originals to the visitors. The aforementioned potter declared that it is not so difficult, nor time consuming to make a clay figurine. Many archaeologists have reached the same conclusion before her. I argue that it is time for the museum visitors to realize it as well. They should realize that it's quite another story when stone is used. And also that regardless of the chosen material, some figurines entail much more sophisticated and demanding construction methods. So hopefully visitors can start wondering about the significance of all these different construction techniques. They can try to decipher the intentions of the producer of this material image, no matter what their consumer perceives. An exhibition orientated to figurines can also experiment with the relations among them. Such a relation cannot be depicted in boring alignments on museums' shelves. And I don't have in mind only the well-documented figurine groups taking into consideration gestures and postures, we can see figurines as acting figures, as members of a complex arrangement that is pulled together and then is torn apart just to be recomposed in another way, possibly with the participation of other objects and of course of prehistoric people, some of whom were seeing themselves on these figurines even if there were no obvious similarities. Attempting to briefly explore the museological potential of figurines, I consciously avoided groundbreaking proposals based on novel exhibition choices. On the contrary, I have tried to point out that the exuberant archaeological debate that is anyway developing and the exhibition toolkit we now possess provides us with reasons and means sufficient to formulate some alternative display ideas coherent with archaeological anxiety and interesting for the visitors, I hope. However, I contend that figurines' exhibits are characterized by remarkable awkwardness that is growing over time compared to the enrichment of both archaeological and museological dialogue. It may seem peculiar, but I believe that the usual disparaging criticism of last century's archaeological museums is unjustifiably harsh. They express the aesthetic, technological, and communicative spirit of their time. In the same time, they were consistently expressed the dominant archaeological interpretations of their time. They were formulated by a less significantly abundant material record by a limited number of scholars and were following more or less a specific scientific paradigm. Thus, archaeological ideas and archaeological exhibitions have been collaborating in harmony for years supporting distinctively national narratives. However, things are not that simple anymore. Εξcavation have produced an explosive amount of archaeological material which fortunately led to a similarly explosive and not only terms of quantity interpretive production which is now supported by numerous scholars and rarely obeyed imperatives of a single dominant theoretical frame. Nevertheless, my content is that museums were unready to handle this absolutely interesting exuberance. Having said that, I don't mean that they haven't renewed their tools and techniques. On the contrary, my problem is that apart from this superficial renovation, museums haven't questioned the mechanisms with which they are interwoven and which they have been successfully supporting since the 19th century. Therefore, as long as we consider that archaeological exhibits have to present unquestionable truths and only them, figurines' interpretive problems are museologically unsurmountable. As long as they have space only for one, two, or three at the most alternative approaches, the plethora of alternative proposals concerning figurines is not museologically manageable. As far as we do not question the role of museums as a geological apparatus of the state and by that, apart from jingoistic discourse, I also mean social prejudice, stereotypical hierarchies, moral standards, et cetera, the uncanny characteristics of prehistoric community as they are expressed on figurines can only be eliminated. However, I argue that this uncanny, incomprehensible fleeting character of prehistory is the key. If we decide that in the museum we should erase it all from the cultural mosaic into our own scale, no matter how many modern glass cases and touch screens we employ, the only possible result is a damp exhibit presenting primitive techniques and childish art. Unless we let this uncanny incomprehensible fleeting character of prehistory to guide us, unless we turn to cheap and flexible exhibits based on fluidity, renegotiation and quick change things that go in hand with the speed in which today's ideas and proposals are born and die, exhibits that will dare to experiment, not being afraid of failure, that will welcome debate, disagreement and conflict, believing that in this way new conclusions will occur, theories will be questioned and discarded, exhibits that will evoke questions bewilderment on anger and not bored admiration. And I think that this is what we need more than anything else, either being scholars in a conference room or normal people out there. Thank you.