Figurines of Jalul Field G: What is left of Domestic Religion?

Seminary Room N110

The debate as to the nature of small figurines as well as other cultic objects found in contexts that range from domestic to cultic has scholars proposing a variety of interpretations of these artifacts. The suggestions go from toys to the representation of local or foreign deities and also bring the challenge as to how one understands a “cultic” object found in a domestic setting and how one interprets a “domestic” object found in a cultic setting. Tell Jalul, located in the Jordan in the outskirts of Madaba and one of the sites part of the Madaba Plains Project, have yielded during the last 10 years of excavations a number of figurines from Field G which has been strictly identified as a domestic area and the comparative and systematic analysis of these figurines cast light not only into the debate regarding these figurines, our understanding of the cultural practices present in Jalul but also into the local/foreign influences merging in the site. The present paper aims to do a descriptive, comparative and functional analysis of these figurines and other cultic objects with other ones found at Tell Jalul from other fields, other Transjordan as well as foreign sites and indentified the artistic/cultural features represented in these artifacts suggesting their possible function.