ABSTRACT
Among the sculptured images of children that appear on Athenian grave monuments during the Classical period there are scenes of a young or adolescent girl who holds a small figure of a female that has been called a “doll.” This image first appeared in Athens in the late fifth or early fourth century BCE and continued throughout the fourth century until the sumptuary legislation of Demetrios of Phaleron effectively ended sculptured grave reliefs.1 Three types of “dolls” appear on the grave reliefs; one type is a clothed and seated figure.2 Most grave reliefs, however, depict girls holding figures of naked females. There are two types of naked figures: a fully limbed figure and a truncated figure. The fully limbed one looks, to our eyes, like an ancient version of the Barbie doll (Fig. 32); it appears on only three grave reliefs.3 The truncated figure is shown more frequently; the legs are cut off above the knees and the arms above the elbows, leaving little more than a torso or trunk with a head (Fig. 33).4 The reliefs that depict these naked figures are the focus of this paper.
