ABSTRACT
While discussion has investigated the ways in which figurines worked and on the particular conditions that made figurines successful as visual rhetoric, it has avoided answering the direct question, what do Neolithic figurines mean? One answer is the recognition that figurines were deeply sedimented within local (pre)historic knowledges, politics and negotiations over reputation and status. In this sense they worked within particular variations of physical, economic and social conditions. One of the most important of these local Neolithic conditions was the construction of architectural environments and the creation of bounded space. Exclusive mechanisms of marking off particular places for working, living, eating and sleeping were complemented by inclusive institutions such as households and villages.
