LAUSR

Abstract This article presents and discusses a small but distinctive group of anthropomorphic antler sculptures from Northern Europe. Five sculptures from two locations, dated to the late 7th – early 6th millennia cal BC, are included in this study. By contextualising this group with broader traditions of Mesolithic art in the Northern and Eastern European forest zone, the distinctive elements – a deliberate lack of bodily and facial details or a peculiar way of depicting faces – are demonstrated. A significant resemblance with these sculptures and wrapped corpses suggests that the sculptures depict either the dead members of these communities or persons capable of switching between different conditions. If this interpretation is correct, it suggests that the agency of the dead members at that time was perceived very differently from what we see in anthropological analogies or in the anthropomorphic figurines from the later archaeological record.