Women's Dance: depictions in ceramic and rock art

Dancing women of Baradergolo in the Ennedi plateau of northeastern Chad, eastern Sahara.

Chigha Sabz, Luristan, western Iran, 5th millenniium bce.

Line of dancing women in tall headdresses, their bodies rhythmically pulsing in union, from Rayy (ancient Rhagae, at least according to Greco-Roman sources), Iran, before 3000 bce. Now in the Louvre.

Tepe Sialk, Iran, late neolithic / 5th millennium bce.

No site given for the drawing above.

By contrast, a conga line of male dancers from Tall-e-Djari, Iran, 4200-3400 bce.

Group of dancing women (reconstructed) from neolithic Samarra, Iraq. Probably 5th millennium bce.

Here they are again, but each woman is being stung by a scorpion. Reminds me of the Tarantella in South Italy, where the bite of a spider is said to precipitate bouts of trance dancing, predominantly among women.

This one is labeled Harappan, though that may be a classificatory, not a site name. Neolithic Pakistan. The women are dancing hand in hand, their hair streaming. The setting is in Nature, with ibex nearby—a theme similar to the Naqada painted pots in the Feb. webcast.

Highly abstracted women dancers, again with flying hair, from painted pots in Kulli, Pakistan, on the western flank of the Indus valley.

More Dancing Women on my blog. This segment on Southwest Asia.

From Northern Africa here.

In Southern African rock art here.

Northern Mediterranean here.

In North America here.

One of the motifs in the Predynastic Egypt show is women line dancing hand in hand, one with a ritual fan in her hand. Below, from a ceramic painting of the Naqada era, in the mid 3000s bce.

The same motif of three dancers, one with ritual fan in hand, on the gold handle of the Gebelein Dagger, a finely knapped flint knife of archaic type.

Here they are again on a pot dated to Naqada IId.

I can't stop Teachable from blowing up those low-res photos.

Dancers from Yongling, Gansu, in the Yangshao period, sometime around 3000 bce in China.

Rock art of dancers who are also invoking, Kharitani I, Tschirkata, Dagestan, in the eastern Caucausus.

Petroglyphs on cliffs of the Lena River in eastern Siberia, at Surutakh-khaya.

Invokers in riverboats! (compare to Egypt!) but these are along the upper Lena river in Siberia, at Shishkin.

Women with staffs, very much in the shape of abstract female figurines, at Beyuk-Dasha, Azerbaijan. Superimposed over a cow or bull, a common pattern in rock art in paleolithic Europe, Egypt (we saw it at Qurta), and elsewhere. It may be another large hoofed animal, like the eland in South Africa.

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