Neolithic seals

The inspiration for the manufacture and use of seals has been observed in Greece already from the Early Neolithic. The first isolated examples date to the Protosesklo phase, while most of them go back to the Middle Neolithic and only a few of them to the last phases of the Neolithic.

Seals were manufactured from clay or soft stone. Their shape was as a rule conical and they often had a hole at the top so that they could be hung. Their seal base was circular, oval, square or rectangular and bore incised decorative motifs which were mainly geometric: zigzag lines, stacked chevrons, triangles, spirals, stepped patterns and meanders. A characteristic motif during the Middle Neolithic was the "meander-maze", while in the Late Neolithic radial and spiral patterns, concentric cycles and cruciform patterns with additional stacked chevrons in the quadrants are encountered. The latter were forerunners to the seals of the Bronze Age.

Neolithic seals differed from later ones in as far as their size and the deep relief of their seal base is concerned. They measured 4-12 cms in length, 3-6 cms in width and 1,4-5 cms in height. The depth and complexity of the decorative motifs was favoured in particular by the use of moulding clay.

The use of seals in the farming and stock-rearing communities of the Neolithic still confounds archaeologists, as no imprints of these seals on non-perishable material (e.g. clay) have been discovered yet (seal impressions), that would prove the need to declare ownership. This use in fact should be associated with the economy and structure of Neolithic society when it started to differ during the last phases of the Neolithic.

The dating of most seals in the Early and Middle Neolithic disproves the theory that they were owned by only a few members of the Neolithic society as prestige objects. On the contrary, it places emphasis on their distinctive and probably frequent use, as pintaderas, that is as seals for the adornment of the body (tattoo). This interpretation is corroborated both by the decorative motifs themselves, and the ethnographic tradition of the peoples of Africa, America, the islands of the Pacific etc.