The neolithic figurines of North – and North-East Europe, belonging to Pitted Ware culture and Pit-Comb Ware culture, are a desideratum to research. These pretty creations, often sculptures of human and animals such as bears, moose, seals, wild-horse, domestic animals and fantastic four-limped beings are spatially distributed over the Baltic Region, Scandinavia and parts of the former Soviet Union: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden. The figurines are a few inches small and made of clay, bone, stone and amber and their original meaning and function is a riddle. This is probably due to their heterogeneous archaeological sources and their difficult interpretation.
This paper aims to give a concise survey on the subject matter and finally introduces the topic to a broader readership because it has been of little consideration so far. Furthermore, the challenging interpretation of these artefacts of the 4th and 3rd millennium BC will be discussed. Where they idols depicting goddesses and gods, children’s toys, self-portraits of people, ritual objects or items of animistic respectively shamanic hunting magic?