Head Hunt

In my second year of Biblical Archaeology studies, I was tasked with finding the potential comparisons for a ceramic head. This ceramic head comes from a collection with no provenance besides the general “Levant” and “roman period”. With many museum artifacts, we use comparison methods to try and find reasonable conclusions as to what the artifact is. 

Much of archaeology, art history, and museum studies is based on this methodology. Although comparative methods are more of an art rather than a science. It does help provide potential insights where traditional provenance methods cannot be applied.

In the case of my little ceramic head, I was charged with providing potential comparisons to help illuminate its use and iconography.

Before we begin, I identified some key features of my little head. First, this face has a hat. Second, there were curls at the temples and base of the neck. Third, the face had an upturned nose, rounded cheeks, and a rounded chin.

Initially, I began by looking at sculptures in the British Museum, The Lovres, and The Met. This initial search led me to find lots of small votive statues with a wide variety of gods and goddesses. 

I knew that the general time frame of my statue had to be from the Hellenic-Late Roman period (500 BCE- 300 AD). Although this time frame is very large, it was a starting point. 

As I began looking at comparisons, I noticed something. The statues of the female goddesses had their hair braided, or created with a specific wave pattern. This pattern was distinctly missing from my little head. 

Therefore, I turned from looking at female statues to male statues. Only a few males in the Greek and Roman pantheon do not have beards. Beardless men/boys are usually Apollo or Eros(Cupid). 

Here is where the head hunt became interesting. In my deep dive into various Eros statuettes, I found him with the distinct curl that I saw on my little head. He frequently has a round face with the curly top knot. This feature was part of Eros statues and a Ptolemaic Egyptian god called Harpocrates. 

Now that I had a good suspicion that this little guy was Eros, I still needed to make sense of the hat. 

Did Eros every feature a hat? What kind of statue did feature hats? Did the hat tell me anything about the potential provenance?

With my narrowed search around Eros statuettes, I began to find that he was often depicted with hats, in different costumes related to other gods or heros. In this process, I travelled to Boston for a regional conference. While I was there I got to go to the Boston Art Gallery and find comparisons in-person. 

This was my favorite part of the process. Items that I had scene photos of digitally were in front of me to see and investigate. I took my own photos for further comparison. 

As the project wrapped up, I concluded that this little head was most likely an Eros face from a small votive statuette. I found a compelling comparison from the Met. 

But my heart still longs for little comparisons. On my trip to LA, I found more Eros comparisons to add to my repertoire. My head hunt continues even though the class is finished which is something I have always enjoyed about historical discoveries.