L’iconografia umana nell’arte preistorica sarda

The human iconography in Sardinia prehistoric art - The anthropomorphic representations, which occur sporadically in
Sardinia during the upper Paleolithic and the early Neolithic, become more frequent during Middle Neolithic and are especially present
during the late Neolithic and Eneolithic. The small statuary in lithic, clay and bone materials, the representations on vases, loom weights
and menhirs statues, the parietal representation in natural and artificial caves are known. In some cases this representation are theriomorphic
or with elements that differ from the human characters. The general frame enriched with new unpublished data, aims to study the
relationship with the original contexts in depth, to identify, possibly, new interpretation keys, and finally, to propose new topics for study.
Only some aspects of the research will be illustrated because of the limits of the editorial space. The complete edition of the results which
will include the study of unpublished artifacts, chronological considerations and new interpretive hypotheses will be presented elsewhere.
The statistical association between the symbolic manifestations and the original contexts provides an additional element for historical
and interpretive assessment. Some considerations on anthropomorphic representations in the craft production are proposed. The data on
representations in natural and artificial caves and on mehnir statues, are excluded because of their classification is partly aided by the explicit
reference to worship and burial areas. Instead, the data from settlements put more questions and make more relevant the statistical
processing on the presence and the frequency of different artifacts in various contexts of discovery.