Anthropomorphic Image in the Symbolic System of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture

The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture was formed within South-Eastern Europe in the second half of the 6th millennium BCE. It belongs to the circle of agrarian cultures of Neolithic and Eneolithic Europe. The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture has a number of features in common with various Neolithic groups of farmers of the Carpathian-Balkan region. The common origin determines this similarity.

Anthropomorphism is a marker of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture and other agrarian cultures of this time. We can define it as superimposing human features on other beings, objects, and phenomena. Obviously, anthropomorphism had the greatest influence on images of humans as figurines. However, the tribes of Cucuteni-Trypillia embodied their anthropomorphic ideas in other forms, sometimes invisible to a person of the 21st century.

Sometimes it has moldings in the shape of human feet at the bottom, as well as a cross-shape of the joining element. We can claim that such a form is also an image of a human, due to analogies from individual figurines.

It has two handles in the form of anthropomorphic schematic heads with circular piercings that together form a «nimbus». Such an image of a human head characterizes anthropomorphic figurines of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. These tribes hardly ever make vessels with realistic human outlines. They create anthropomorphic images through symbols and isolated elements of human features.

The largest number of figurines are female (male and androgens occur less often). 

Some figurines may represent those who performed these rituals. Such statuettes have a wide-open mouth and eyes, a focused facial expression, arms stretched up or forward, etc. The figurine from the Kolodiazhne settlement (Zhytomyr region, Ukraine) has some of these features. Perhaps this is the image of a witch in a prayer position.

In this way, Cucuteni-Trypillia tribes could address (pray to) their ancestors after their death.
Anthropomorphism reflects the sacred ideas of the Cucuteni-Trypillia tribes. The image of humans was a tool for the functioning of their cults. Vessels correspond to the human body in the aspect of image and function (places that keep food and soul). The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture’s mythological and ritual systems include many characters.

They depicted them in different ways: through the decoration of vessels, the giving of certain human features to ceramic products (heads instead of handles, moldings in the shape of female breasts or feet, etc.), and the reproduction of anthropomorphic creatures in the form of figurines.