This very stylised, Chalcolithic period Kiliya statuette is typical of the category, the form consisting of sharp angles and complementary curves, with its massive head posing oblique on a thin neck, a particularity which gave this genre the informal name of “stargazer”, abstract but also very graceful at the same time.
Proportion-wise the idol can be divided into three equal portions, one part corresponding to the head and neck, the second from the torso down to the hips and a third part corresponding to the legs and feet. The head is almost as wide as the shoulders, the arms look similar to bat-wings, whereas the rest of the idol is rather flat.
The arms are differentiated from the rest of the body by exceptionally narrow oblique cuts, generating angular hips and elbows. Kiliya statuettes were named after the famous Gallipoli peninsula site in modern Turkey, where an alabaster figurine, now kept at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, was discovered for the first time at the beginning of the 20th century.
It seems that the majority, if not all, of the Kiliya statuettes, were created in big workshops, following strictly standardized formulas, and possibly on a chain work basis, which did not allow much individual choice or conspicuous modifications, with form and technical execution remaining fundamentally the same. Except for a few rare exceptions, which may not be the production of a workshop but of individuals, the only differences that we can observe are to be found in minute details, such as the rendering of the feet, in the presence or absence of small round eyes in low relief, in the incised pubic triangle, and/or on the back part of the idols, where an horizontal incision is thus creating the buttocks.