Newly discovered clay figurines change our understanding of the prehistoric Middle East

Newly discovered artifacts are evidence of the earliest known example of a tradition of making clay figurines in the Middle East — and challenge long-held beliefs about when and how clay began to be used for symbolic purposes in the region, according to a study published November 11, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One by Laurent Davin from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and colleagues.

These artifacts, originally excavated from three sites in modern-day Israel, date back between about 15,000 and 11,500 years ago. Some appear to represent birds, mammals, and humans, and some show traces of orange or red coloring — such as one fragment that may have depicted the facial pattern of a mountain gazelle.

At the time, this region was inhabited by Natufian communities, a sedentary hunter-gatherer culture. While archaeologists have previously found figurines from the Natufian period, most have been made from bone or stone, and it has been believed that clay figurines only become common in this region alongside the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic age, beginning around 11,500 years ago.

But, the authors of this paper say, these new findings show that Natufian figures were more varied and complex than we once thought — and suggest that the seeds of the region’s Neolithic culture were sown well before the agricultural revolution.

Dr. Davin adds: “These discoveries change how we understand the beginnings of artistic expression in the first villages of humanity. Thousands of years before agriculture and pottery emerged, people were already using clay to create figures, as part of their beliefs and knowledge of the natural world. What is particularly fascinating is the evidence that children were involved in making these objects, suggesting that creativity and cultural knowledge were shared across generations.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/3UtmOO2

Citation: Davin L, Sindel M, Weinstein-Evron M, Yeshurun R, Kaufman D, Grosman L, et al. (2026) Modelling symbols among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay figurines in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia. PLoS One 21(11): e0360388. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360388

Author countries: Israel, France.

Funding: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Council for Higher Education (Jerusalem, Israel) (L.D.) https://www.academy.ac.il/RichText/GeneralPage.aspx?nodeId=1671 _Computational Archaeology Laboratory, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (L.D., L.G.) https://archaeology.huji.ac.il/computational-archaeology-laboratory _Fondation des Treilles (Paris, France) (L.D.) https://www.fondationdestreilles.com/en/ _Fondation Fyssen (Paris, France) (L.D.) https://www.fondationfyssen.fr/en/home/ _Irene Levi Sala Care Archaeological Foundation (Jerusalem, Israel) (L.D., H.K., F.R.V.) https://www.prehistory.org.il/en/funds/ _Israel Science Foundation (Excavations at el-Wad Terrace – grant 511/22 to R.Y.; grant 703/23 to L.G. and L.D.) https://www.isf.org.il/#/ _French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (F.R.V.) https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/ _Wenner–Gren Foundation (H.K., F.R.V.) https://wennergren.org/ _Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem (F.R.V.) https://www.crfj.org/ _National Geographic Foundation (H.K., F.R.V.) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society/.