The amphora with human figures from Poduri

Narration text

Most Cucuteni vessels are decorated with spirals, meanders and geometric bands. This amphora from Poduri is an exception: human figures are painted on its body. They are pared down to essentials: a torso, arms, sometimes a barely sketched head.

We do not know whom they represent. Dancers, perhaps, or people taking part in a ritual, ancestors or deities. The vessel belongs to the Cucuteni B phase, the final stage of this civilisation.

In this period painting becomes freer, and figurative images of people and animals appear more and more often on vessels. Look at how the artist organised the space: the figures are framed in registers, like a comic strip unfolding around the pot. To see the whole scene you would have to walk around it.

Imagine how it looked in the hands of those who used it, turned slowly in the firelight. For them the images surely carried a meaning we can only try to guess.