Head and neck of a marble female figure

Technical analyses: Multiband imaging, optical microscopyMBI, XRFX-ray fluorescence spectroscopy


This marble head with a long cylindrical neck are is all that remain of a standing or seated figure. It features a slightly bulbous crown above bored eye sockets, perhaps for inlays, and an especially prominent, rounded nose above a lightly incised mouth. The marble surface is weathered with erosion along the grain boundaries. There are remains of brown accretions particularly thick on the lower third of the reverse and on the break surface at the bottom. There are traces of a whitish material at the holes drilled for the eyes, but no further evidence for hypothesized inlays. The head is similar to those found on Late Neolithic standing and seated figures known throughout Greece and the Balkans. (1)


Sandy MacGillivray, Dorothy Abramitis, Federico Carò



(1) See, Getz-Preziosi, Pat. Early Cycladic Art in North American Collections, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1987, p. 128, no. 3.