The term ‘fetish’ has been used since the sixteenth century to refer to indigenous ‘power objects’, perceived to embody positive supernatural energy, which could be harnessed to protect people, and to bring them good luck, health, prosperity or social well-being. In the late nineteenth century the term was incorporated into Western scientific discourse by scholars such as Edward Tylor, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. More recently, visual culture studies have extended the relevance of the term to argue that fetishistic viewing plays an important part in everyday visual consumption. Although various aspects of these conceptions of ‘fetishism’ have not stood up to recent critical scrutiny, the term in general remains highly relevant to discussions of the perception of art-objects. Anthropologists and archaeologists interested in the ‘objectification’ of persons and the ‘personhood’ of objects have continued to explore the ways in which cultural artefacts are employed and transformed, particularly when perceived to be embodied with human-like social agency and even sacred power. The visual properties of art-works, for example, may not only be evaluated aesthetically in terms of their beauty, but also as efficacious manifestations of supernatural power, which can sometimes have a dazzling ‘anaesthetic’ effect on their viewers.

In this paper, I explore these ideas about fetishism further with reference to the visual culture of the Later Neolithic in South-East Italy. For this period (c. 5800–4100 BC), it is clear that many aspects of the material world were now ascribed a greater visual significance, being skilfully modelled into more varied art-forms and highlighted by more innovative and elaborate decoration, ritual performances and special deposits. Examples include decorated serving vessels of fineware, anthropomorphic figurines, body ornaments, concentric ditches delineating living contexts, mortuary deposits, and liminal caves used for initiation rites. A culturally specific range of powerful bodily and abstract symbols unified and animated these material forms, to the extent that we can arguably talk of a fetishistic way of seeing and an integrated and embedded visual culture in Later Neolithic Apulia.

This fetishistic visual culture may have been developed and exploited by family elders and emergent community leaders to help construct social bodies. In particular, it may have been used – in everyday and ritual visual consumption – to highlight and strengthen social connections, distinctions and boundaries: between members of different age-groups, genders, kin-groups and communities; and between the living, the ancestors and the supernatural. Ultimately, it may have derived its power from social tensions surrounding the final transition to, and full establishment of, an agricultural way of life in South-East Italy.

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