Clay Figurines From Israel Suggest Hunter-Gatherer Adults and Children Modelled Clay 15,000 Years Ago

For decades, archaeologists linked clay modelling in Southwest Asia to the first farming villages, roughly 11,500 years ago. A study published on 11 November 2026 in PLOS One argues the habit started thousands of years earlier, among mobile and semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers in what is now Israel. The team also found a small human figurine whose back carries an adult’s fingerprint with a child’s fingerprint pressed on top.

A hidden collection in old sediments

Laurent Davin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem led the work with colleagues including Marion Sindel, Mina Weinstein-Evron, Reuven Yeshurun, Daniel Kaufman, Leore Grosman, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Hamoudi Khalaily and Francois Valla. The authors re-sorted sieved sediments from excavated Natufian layers. Earlier teams had set many of these small clay pieces aside because they assumed the fragments related to pigment production.

The material comes from three Natufian sites in Israel: el-Wad Terrace on Mount Carmel, Hayonim Terrace in the Galilee, and Eynan-Mallaha in the Upper Jordan Valley. The Natufian period spans about 15,000 to 11,650 years ago, and the authors report that the clay pieces appear across its early, late and final phases.

What the researchers found

The team identified 154 figurative clay artefacts. Fifteen are figurines: eleven resemble birds, two resemble hoofed animals (artiodactyls) and two depict people. The other 139 are small clay cylinders, which the authors think are probably fragments of bodies and limbs. Only two objects survived complete, so most of the evidence rests on broken pieces.

The authors describe this as the earliest clay figurative tradition known in Southwest Asia. They place it before the farming “revolution of symbols” that scholars usually tie to the Neolithic.

One standout is a fragmentary animal head from the Final Natufian at Eynan-Mallaha. Red colorant covers it, and the authors propose it shows a mountain gazelle. Horns were inserted separately, which makes it the only Natufian figurine with depicted horns or antlers. The paper also discusses a figurine from Nahal Ein Gev II near the Sea of Galilee that shows a woman interacting with a goose. Researchers published that piece separately in PNAS in November 2025. It stands about 3.7 centimetres tall, was baked at no more than about 400 degrees Celsius and later received red hematite colouring.

The adult and child fingerprints

Davin and colleagues used dermatoglyphic analysis, which studies the ridge patterns that fingertips leave in soft clay. The release image caption describes a stylised human body, modelled about 15,000 years ago at Eynan-Mallaha. It states that the back of the figurine bears an adult’s fingerprint, covered by a child’s. The authors also note fingertip depressions and palm prints on other pieces. In their interpretation, both children and adults made these objects.

That reading matters because direct traces of children in prehistory are rare. A child’s print over an adult’s suggests, though it cannot prove, that a young person touched or worked the same piece after an adult shaped it. The overlap could reflect teaching, play or shared making.

How they studied the clay

The team combined technological and use-wear analysis with measurements of shape and style. They compared the clay pieces with Natufian figures carved from bone and stone. Scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectroscopy identified an iron-rich coating on some pieces, which explains the orange and red colour.

Why it matters

The Natufians lived before agriculture, yet they built long-lived settlements and developed rich symbolic traditions. Showing that they also modelled clay widens the list of materials they used for images, and it suggests that the idea of shaping clay did not need farming to appear. Birds dominate the figurines, which may point to a strong symbolic role for birds, though the authors base that partly on stylistic comparison and reasoning about animal behaviour.

Caveats and open questions

The authors call this a preliminary study. They have not yet characterised the clay sources, the colorants or the firing temperatures. They also cannot say whether people fired some pieces on purpose or whether campfires baked them by accident. Planned work includes thermal demagnetisation and infrared spectroscopy to reconstruct heating, plus petrographic analysis to trace the clay to its source. Because most pieces are fragments, the identification of species and the meaning of the cylinders remain open to debate.

Image: Natufian clay figurine from Eynan-Mallaha. Credit: Laurent Davin, CC BY 4.0.

Sources

• Davin L. et al., “Modelling symbols among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay figurines in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia,” PLOS One 21(11): e0360388 (2026)
• EurekAlert news release, 11 November 2026
• EurekAlert image page (photo credit Laurent Davin)
• Hebrew University: The Woman and the Goose (PNAS 2025 figurine)
• Phys.org coverage (page did not load for me)