Clay Figurines Representing Musicians and Dancers in the Female World and Childhood: Towards an Archaeology of Musical and Dance Performance

Terracotta figurines representing musicians and dance activities are spread across a broad geographical space and a wide chronological spectrum in the ancient world. Yet it is only recently that coroplastic art featuring musical and dance performances has been incorporated into the body of sources and documentation within the fields of archaeology of musical and dance performance. Figurines depicted as grotesques or caricatures seem to recall the noisy performances of ritual reenactments that included masked and costumed musicians and dancers in a sacred setting. These caricatures may have been conceived as souvenirs of particular moments in a given ritual that involved not only girls and children but also singers, dancers, and musicians.