This conference is dedicated to a category of objects usually classified in the modern category of toys: anthropomorphic figurines which often represent an adult woman with a sexed body, commonly called "dolls" because of their small size and their articulated members that suggest manipulation. In the Roman world, in Italy and the provinces, these figurines are made of bone, ivory, wood, and precious material such as amber from the imperial Roman era to late Antiquity (late 1st-7th cent. AD).
These objects are ambiguous (secular toy or sacred object? mortal or divine figure? child’s doll or theatrical puppet?).
This conference intends to investigate their specificities and transformations in space and time in order to elucidate the meaning of their ambiguities. Typo-chronological: material, production methods, provenance (domestic, votive, funerary) and distribution network. Socio-religious: defining contexts of manipulations (secular, ritual or both?), the age group (only before adulthood?), and the sex (only for girls?) and their transformations in space and time. The conference will also examine representations of dolls in different media (funerary reliefs, sarcophagi...), question the reconstruction of their clothing and bodily ornaments, and address the symbolic and learning function of this category of objects.