Art review : THE AIN GHAZAL PLASTER HEADS

We are in the socalled pre-pottery neolithic, which is very far back in the earliest settled civilizations. Ain Ghazal was a large city, compared to the times, placed near modern day Amman in Jordan. It had thousands of inhabitants and apparently a thriving religious inclination.

When the city was excavated, around thirty statues, made of plastered twigs, were found all around the site. These were either headless bodies or bodyless heads. The reason for this may still be a mystery, but an explanation could be that they served as a shaman´s tool for imbuing human power into them, and serve as a personal reliquie for a living person. When this person died though, the "soul" was released of the statue by breaking its neck.

There is a strange alien expression on them. The eyes are of the greatest importance, as those are the one radiating life to the viewer and the owner of the atatue, if we believe the theory. I am reminded of the big stone statues on Easter Island, that had some equally staring, if larger, eyes of the same sort of staring glow.

Sometimes two heads belong to the same body. It is unknown why, but I would think it comes down to family relations, maybe parents or grand parent ancestors. There are no particular individualism here, they are all conceptualized as a form of ghost or simplified collective memory. The point could also just be, that there was only the one and the same artist who prepared them and his way of molding it looked thus.

Anyway, the expression is haunting and the craftmanship is astounding for around 8000 years ago or so. I am always wondering what people back then were thinking and how they understood the world. It is clear that religion have always inhibited philosophical thought and that it tends to stop people asking questions about reality, and just satisfy themselves with the standard answers imposed by the "priests" ... but still they have a strong emotional world underneath, that comes to life in the form of these statues.