Многоликие бронзовые фигурки уродцев Восточной Европы: Типология и семантика

Abstract

The paper considers bronze anthropomorphous figurines known in learned literature under the term of "freaks of nature". They were named this way due to the absence of some parts of a body, e.g. a hand, a leg. an eye. an ear. etc. Among them there are figurines which have got two or four faces so that they may be singled out in a "manyfaced" group. They are characterized by the following stylistic features: the ugliness or absence of a certain body part; emphasizing sex indications; the presence of female sex indication in male figurines and vice versa; an image of a child face (rarely that of an animal) in the area of a breast or a palm: the absence of clothes.