Neolithic bodies are not only manifestations of subjective principles. Social and symbolic norms are also incorporated within the bodies of both actual and represented individuals. These norms often relate to economic and religious notions of society, as well as to effigies. Owing to high population densities in Neolithic villages, only a select group of the inhabitants were buried within settlements or represented in images. This generated a category of privileged individuals and body features, which were related to symbolic principles rather than social hierarchy. Such practices among Neolithic societies in the Balkans are evident within burials and human representations. Individuals buried inside settlements, anthropomorphic house models, and figurines from several sites in Ovče Pole, Pelagonia, and the Skopje Valley are used as case studies in this paper. Placing these sites into a wider geographical context, it is argued that gender, age and body parts were significant criteria in funerary practices and features of corporeality.

This paper focusses on a set of anthropomorphic figurines. It suggests that realistic human proportion and canonical body posture were pursued in the carving of these objects as a means of expressing ideology, in a context of diversified forms of manipulation of bodies in funerary practices. It is argued that, against a background of predominantly schematic art, the more realistic and canonical anthropomorphic representation of the human body was used to communicate a set of ideological statements in a more controlled and immediate way, in a period of ontological and cosmological transition.