Daughters of the Sun: Small Human Images in Megalithic Iberia, 4th-3rd Millennium BC
By (author) Primitiva Bueno-Ramírez By (author) Jorge A. Soler Díaz
Hardback (Published)
(November 2025)
ISBN: 9781805831372
8.07 x 11.46 inches
Price: $98.00
In stock
This study examines Iberian Neolithic and Chalcolithic figurines (4th-3rd millennia BC), exploring their symbolism, craft, and role in funerary and social life. Rich in form and context, these “sun-eyed” images reveal identities, ideologies, and long-distance connections within European prehistory.
This volume offers the first comprehensive study dedicated to the small anthropomorphic figurines of Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia, exploring their form, symbolism, and role within wider megalithic traditions. Produced between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, these portable images-often characterised by their striking “sun-eyed” motifs-accompanied the development of funerary monuments, domestic practices, and ritual life. Far from being marginal curiosities, they provide crucial evidence for understanding social identities, gender roles, craft specialisation, and long-distance cultural connectivity across Europe. Through a combination of historiographic review, typological analysis, and contextual study, the authors trace the Iberian record from early discoveries in the nineteenth century to current debates. The work situates these figurines within broader traditions of European prehistoric art while highlighting their unique density and diversity in the Iberian Peninsula. By examining their manufacture, iconography, and circulation, the book demonstrates how these “daughters of the sun” shaped communal narratives of ancestry, inheritance, and ideology, making them a key reference point in the study of symbolic practices in Late Prehistory.
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements - Margarita Sanchez Romero
Foreword - Antonio Carvalho
Preface - Primitiva Bueno Ramirez and Jorge A. Soler Diaz
Presentation
Chapter 1. The Figurines of Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 2. Thought and Practice for a State of Art of Human Figurines in Iberia
Chapter 3. Women's Bodies in Portable Art from the Palaeolithic to Late Prehistory in Europe
Chapter 4. Typologies as a Product of Iberian Historiography in the 19th and First Half of the 20th Century
Chapter 5. Human Shapes for Social Research
Chapter 6. Progress in the Knowledge of Geometric Shapes In the Iberian Figurines
Northeast Iberia.
Chapter 7. Anthropomorphic Expression in Clay
Chapter 8. Anthropomorphic Figurines from Southwest Iberia
Chapter 9. Summary of Human Geometry and Ideomorphus Portable Objects
Chapter 10. Crafts, Workshops and Functionalities
Chapter 11. Geographies and Contexts of Figurines in Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 12. People and Small Human Bodies
Chapter 13. Combining Human Images. Figurines in the Iberian Post-Glacial Art
Chapter 14. The Daughters of the Sun, Testimony of the Social Relations and Connectivities in Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 15. An Exceptional Legacy
Bibliography
,
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements – Margarita Sánchez Romero
Foreword – António Carvalho
Preface – Primitiva Bueno Ramírez and Jorge A. Soler Díaz
Presentation
Chapter 1. The Figurines of Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 2. Thought and Practice for a State of Art of Human Figurines in Iberia
Chapter 3. Women’s Bodies in Portable Art from the Palaeolithic to Late Prehistory in Europe
Chapter 4. Typologies as a Product of Iberian Historiography in the 19th and First Half of the 20th Century
Chapter 5. Human Shapes for Social Research
Chapter 6. Progress in the Knowledge of Geometric Shapes In the Iberian Figurines
Chapter 7. Anthropomorphic Expression in Clay
Chapter 8. Anthropomorphic Figurines from Southwest Iberia
Chapter 9. Summary of Human Geometry and Ideomorphus Portable Objects
Chapter 10. Crafts, Workshops and Functionalities
Chapter 11. Geographies and Contexts of Figurines in Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 12. People and Small Human Bodies
Chapter 13. Combining Human Images. Figurines in the Iberian Post-Glacial Art
Chapter 14. The Daughters of the Sun, Testimony of the Social Relations and Connectivities in Late Iberian Prehistory
Chapter 15. An Exceptional Legacy
Bibliography
Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, Professor of Prehistory at the University of Alcalá, is a specialist in megaliths. She has field experience in Europe’s most emblematic monuments, where the performance of death included decorated walls, coloured corpses, steles, statues and menhirs, as well as figurines. She has taken an interest in reconstructing these processes beyond architectural typologies, to provide evidence on identity, gender, provenance, burial garments and shared iconographies on both a small and large scale.
Jorge A. Soler Diaz is the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Alicante. As coordinator of major exhibitions at the Archaeological Museum of Alicante, he has participated in projects with museums in Asia, Europe and America. He is specialist in late prehistoric collective burials in the caves of the region, from which he has studied collections of decorated long bones, interpreting them as ideological systems for the establishment of social pacts.
- By (author) Primitiva Bueno-Ramírez
- By (author) Jorge A. Soler Díaz
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