Abstract EN:

Catalogue and commentary of a unit of classical and Hellenistic terracottas (IVth to III century BC)found in the thesmophorion of Thasos (Greece). This considerable amount of mouldmade figurines are studied here as industrial product intended to satisfy the needs of popular devotion. The analysis of the material takes in account the totality of the sherds (ca 10 000) and not, as usually, an hazardous and more or less significative sampling of interesting pieces: reconstruction of about 40 mould-types (graphically illustrated), with the diagram of their derivative production (succession of generations, different versions of the same mould-type. . . ) And minimal number of items for each mouldtype or class of votive. This analysis allows to define the different classes of gifts for each period and to distinguish sh the formation, in the Ist half of the IVth century, a date contemporary with the enlargement of the sanctuary, of a specific class, representing crowned female worshippers, hands upraised, and gradually superseding the other classes of gifts: these figurines may illustrate some precise rituals in the festival of the thesmophoria. The minute observation of the manufacture methods allows to observe how the craftsmen satisfied that specific demand,in a first time adapting one by one the existent types representing female deities, and secondly producing by industrial methods new types, specially created but still inspired by the attic sculpture. In the Hellenistic period, they only appropriate, in the wide repertoire the tanagrean koine,the types which their customers could identify with female worshippers. In this way does appear the duality of the coroplast's craft,half-way in between the well-known traditions of thasian sculpture and pottery: judging from their sculptural quality, most of the prototypes must have been modelled by authentic sculptors who also made the first moulds:on the other hand, the mass of derivative production, which quality fast decline in the succession of generations and versions, must have been manufactured by simple moulders,probably potters who produced figurines as a subsidiary activity.