Abstract/Summary

During the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age many European communities adopted similar iconographic themes through shared cosmological understanding of the world and perhaps religious practice too. Different combinations of solar, anthropomorphic and ornithomorphic imagery, in particular, occur repeatedly in different locations at different times during this period, not least along the southern margins of the Carpathian Basin and the northern Balkans. This paper explores the creativity and the role of craftspeople in these regions in shaping the religious discourse through making of bird-shaped objects, either as vessels, rattles or figurines. Rather than explaining the similarities and differences in these objects as resulting from the socio-political relationships between different ‘cultures’, as they were commonly treated in the literature, I emphasise the importance of the decision-making process in craft by examining why certain forms, techniques and styles were chosen over others. I conclude that it is the relationship between the craftspeople and their immediate community that is the most influential factor affecting their practice. Finally, by considering clay birds as both symbolically charged religious paraphernalia and works of craft I offer an explanation as to why stylisation and abstraction were the dominant creative forces in their making during the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.