Because Greek and Roman writers left us a large body of written texts, including anecdotes about everyday life, we know that little Greek and Roman girls did play with dolls in ancient times.
Some of the oldest Greek examples of dolls, dating back to the 7th century BCE, have a strange bell shape to the body with elongated necks. Their legs, however, were jointed to the bottom of the bell structure. You can find images of these by googling the term “plaggona,” and this type of doll is sold in modern Greece as a symbol of the country’s history to this day.
More human-looking terracotta dolls with jointed arms and legs have been excavated from sites in ancient Greece as well, dating back as early as 500 BCE. An article written by Jessica Phippen on the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum website tells us that dolls “were popular across the Mediterranean, from Southern Italy to Egypt and Asia Minor”(1) during this early time period.
Seated dolls came on the scene at about this time. According to Phippen, “The majority of Greek or Roman seated dolls are nude and unadorned with a few examples wearing more elaborate hairstyles or jewelery. Children would have been able to dress these dolls in real garments.” This was an early version of the “shelf-sitter” doll, I imagine.
Phippen’s article, which is one of the most informative that I was able to find, explains how a doll could be updated by re-working the terracotta so that the doll’s hairstyle would reflect the latest fashion trends.
A number of the articles I’ve found, including one on the Getty Museum website, suggest that dolls were used in a rite of passage ceremony, in which an adolescent girl would give up her doll to show that she’s evolving into a woman. “Ancient writers suggest that, just before their marriage, girls would dedicate dolls and other toys to various goddesses.”(2) Artemis was the goddess of choice for most Greek girls, and Venus was more popular for the young ladies of Rome.
This reminds me a lot of the modern quinceañera doll, which is used as part of a fifteen-year-old girl’s birthday party in Latino families. The quinceañera doll is given to the girl’s father at the girl’s fifteenth birthday party. The Wikipedia article on the origin of the quinceañera states that “Contemporary festivities combine Catholic traditions from old Spain with the traditions of indigenous heritages of pre-Columbian Mexico, along with a few modern twists, and rely heavily on European influence from the period of the Second Mexican Empire,” (3) but I wonder if a person could actually trace the practice back to ancient Greece and Rome.
Interestingly, many of these Greco-Roman dolls are both articulated and fashionable for their time. Dolls from this period have holes at the arms and legs, where they were joined to the torso by pegs, strings, or wires, making them somewhat puppet-like.
A jointed Greek doll from ancient Corinth on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been painted with a row of v-shaped symbols that remind us of knitted sweaters. The Met’s article suggests that this doll’s “attire—a cylindrical polos (headdress) and a short tunic and shoes—seems to indicate that [the dolls represent] ritual dancers.” Could these be an early form of a celebrity doll, perhaps? We may never know.
Although many of these dolls are made of terracotta clay, there are other representations made of various materials. “Dolls were fashioned out of a variety of materials including wood, terracotta, bone, ivory, marble, and alabaster. Terracotta examples are the most abundant in the archaeological record, due to their durable nature and to the fact that terracotta dolls enjoyed a long history throughout the Greco-Roman period. In addition, terracotta is a relatively inexpensive and abundant material, thus it would have been more affordable to a wider portion of the population than a material like ivory” (The Met). A child would have had to have been from a very wealthy family to have owned an ivory doll.
Of course children who died prematurely were buried with their dolls, so we can guess these were not just objects for rituals, but they were used as playthings in ancient Greek and Roman homes.
When you read an article like this, do you ever wonder what’s missing from this picture? I do! I want to know whether or not children were involved in the making of their dolls. And if so, was this part of a life-skill lesson?
How about you? If you could talk to a person from ancient Greece or Rome, what questions would you ask them?
Do you also see a connection between the modern quinceañera doll and the coming-of-age practices of ancient Greece and Rome?
Please leave a comment!
- Phippen, Jessica (article author).”Teracotta jointed ‘doll’.” [Medium: Teracotta]. 5th Century BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Associated image is in the public domain.
- Artist unknown. “Doll.” [Medium: Teracotta]. 5th Century BCE. Getty Museum Collection, Pacific Palisades, CA. Associated image is in the public domain.
- Wikipedia contributors. “Quinceañera.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 Jun. 2024. Web. 25 Jun. 2024.
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