Indus terracotta figurines

Types

Human figurines are predominantly female, hand-modelled, with applied ornament — elaborate headdresses, fan-shaped or panniered arrangements, necklaces, girdles — and often pinched or applied facial features. Male figurines occur but are far fewer. Animal figurines are abundant: bulls, dogs, birds, monkeys, and models of carts with movable wheels.

Some pieces are clearly toys, including whistles, rattles and cart models with axles. Others are less easily assigned.

The mother goddess question

The female figurines have often been described as mother goddesses, and the description passed into general accounts of Indus religion. The evidence for it is the quantity, the emphasis on ornament, and analogy with the Near East, where female figurines have been read the same way.

Objections are substantial. The figurines are found in ordinary houses and in rubbish, not in identifiable shrines; they vary greatly rather than following a canonical type; some are demonstrably toys; and no Indus structure has been securely identified as a temple. Whether they are cult objects, votive offerings, toys, charms or something else is not established, and the confident label has been criticised as an assumption imported from elsewhere.

Value

Their real value is different. Because they are numerous, made locally, and cheap, they record what monumental material does not — dress, ornament, hairstyle, the animals people kept, the vehicles they used. The cart models in particular have been used to reconstruct Indus transport, and the continuity of the type into modern South Asian bullock carts is striking.