New approaches reviving old findings: Neolithic ceramic figurines of the Lengyel culture from Lower Austria

Abstract Neolithic anthropomorphic figurines, usually manufactured from ceramics, were found in large quantities at many sites. Despite past efforts to interpret their meaning, research has been stagnating for two main reasons. First, figurines have been considered artefacts of high heritage value and, therefore, they are usually not allowed to be analysed using invasive methods, which would be the most effective in ceramic research, allowing for identifying provenance, firing temperature, preferences of clay mixing, etc. When such destructive methods are employed in figurine analysis, it is done individually and not to an extent of any statistical relevance. Moreover, the meaning of such visual representations, which is not described in written sources, is elusive and cannot be recognised by archaeological methods. However, despite not knowing the meaning, we can attempt to clarify the figurines’ social role by identifying distinct features that reveal how particular parts of the operational chain were organised, as well as their complexity. We employ a combination of optical microscopy, XRD, p-XRF, 3D, and DStretch visual decorrelation to examine a collection of forty figurines of the Lengyel culture from the territory of Lower Austria. We use methods that can be widely employed and yield a wealth of new data, and which can, when applied to further assemblages, significantly expand our present knowledge.