Their definition as naturalistic does not imply that they always present a fully detailed rendering of humans, but that they give us as much evidence as needed in order to recognize the naturalistic rendering of a human body or member, most of the times even its sex.
Of course, there are cases when the interference of the artistic skill of the modeller results to expressive faces and to the rendering of motion. The series of figurines thus created have similar modelling but are differentiated according to sex (males, females, hermaphrodites) or posture (standing, seated, sitting on the ground in various poses). Heads may resemble to each other but they may also have faces which are not constantly repeated, or even bear apotropaic features, often underlined by the use of painted decoration.
Embedded in naturalistic representational art is the power of rendering the complexity of the visible world.
The variety in rendering which is related, of course, with the modeller’s artistic skill and competence, reveals his attempt to represent certain members of his environment by depicting some of their main features, which differentiate them from the rest of the social community.
Furthermore, the expressive power of some human figurines underlines the modeller’s intention to render plastically the portraits of certain really-existing people of his environment and often some of their everyday activities.
Characteristic are :
a) certain figurines rendering diseases, such as bronchocele of the thyroid, cyphosis (hump) and the Down Syndrome.
