While I was looking into Portrait No. 2 (our friendly Pig Rattle), I came across a long list of fascinating objects, which I filed away to return to at a later date.
Among other things, my investigation of rattles led me to a wonderful kind of object called a guttus tintinnabula, a sort of two-in-one baby bottle-rattle used in ancient times. Here is a good example of one, at the Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología in Spain. The idea was that once the infant had finished their bottle, it could then be enjoyed as a rattle after the milk was all gone.
One thing I liked especially about this idea was the satisfying blurring of practicality and playfulness. The guttus tintinnabula would have been one of the baby’s very first playthings, providing them with a few moments of entertainment. I reserve the right to one day portray this especially fabulous one from Manduria (Italy) dated to 5th-4th C BC – yet another pig!
I was so delighted and surprised by these objects that I enthusiastically started to pull on the thread of ancient baby bottles, to see where it would lead. Not long after I started, I came across this photograph of what are thought to be baby bottles in the shape of animals, from Vösendorf (Austria) dated to the late Bronze Age-early Iron Age (1200–800 BC). The photograph made me feel giddy.
A study was carried out on these Vösendorf vessels as well as other similar vessels (in this case, not animal shaped) to determine what they had contained. The study, published in Nature, states that two of the vessels examined had been found in burials of children aged 1 to 2 years, and a third vessel was found in the burial of a child who was up to 6 years old. The authors concluded that the residue inside these was ruminant milk – a fascinating find in terms of weaning and women’s roles in the age of farming. You can find out more about them in this New York Times article.
In my perusal, I came across a further thread to get lost in –prehistoric anthropomorphic and zoomorphic vessels. While searching for other footed vessels, I was particularly taken by these stunning 7200 year old Neolithic ones from Croatia, used to keep cheese in (exhibited at the Sibenik Museum, Croatia). During that period in that region, different designs of pottery were used to store different kinds of foods – and this style was used for cheese. The date of these struck me particularly.
During my thread-pulling, I did not see any other vessels similar to the ones from Vösendorf. I tried to work out what aspects of the baby bottles were responsible for delighting me so intensely. I think it comes down to the fact that although their bodies are animals, they have two human legs, and big feet, looking a little like they are wearing boots. There is something tenderly comical about them.
They also remind me of fantastical hybrid animals and mythological creatures like centaurs or griffins, and make me want to get a copy of Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings to work out which of the beings these most closely resemble. I see human legs, I see cow-like or goat-like features (see horns), but their faces and body shapes also look to me a little like birds pecking the ground.
Possibly because they are made from clay, they look like characters from a stop motion clay animation, with funny little stances. A friend of mine remarked that one of them looks like they are leaning a little too heavily, as though they have been on their legs for too long and have grown weary. Any time now we might hear them having a mundane conversation while grazing – will Wallace and Gromit wonder into the frame?
And as always, I spent a large portion of my week daydreaming of their use in context – of parents working outdoors, of burps and spilt milk, of chattering da-da-da, of pudgy, dimpled, grubby fingers grabbing the bottles, of loud swallowing and drowsy eyelids, and of tiny humans who were buried with their special baby bottle for company.