Early farming culture, sometimes called 'the cultures of painted pottery', took shape in an almost uninterrupted belt from Southern Asia to the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The Hermitage has many finds excavated in Moldova and Ukraine (the Tripoli and Gumelnitsa cultures), and Southern Turkmenia.

These areas produced similar stone and copper everyday and ritual objects, and were particularly rich in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, but the types of vessels and styles of representation of people and animals differ.

In the Turkmenian finds we can trace the transition from simple monochrome linear painting to polychrome and monochrome geometric patterns and representation of people and animals. Images of animals gradually evolved from simple forms, sometimes difficult to distinguish, to realistic figurines of bulls, goats and sheep. Most of the female figurines show seated women; originally they were very stylized and their sexual attributes were emphasized, paint being used to depict jewellery and solar signs on their hips. The style of such female figurines changed in the late Eneolithic period: they still depicted seated women, but with square shoulders and arms conveyed merely as bulging lines, while more complex hair styles appeared and pellets of clay were added to form shoulders and breasts. Male figurines were now also made.

In the late 3rd and early 2nd millenium BC the culture of the early farmers developed into a form of early civilization, with individually modelled vessels replaced by thrown pottery, and bronze objects becoming widespread.

The Tripoli and Gumelnitsa cultures enable us to study the development of the appropriate tribes from the early Eneolithic period to the early Bronze age. These collections consist of various vessels richly decorated with painted, pressed and embossed patterns, as well as numerous tools and ritual objects, many objects revealing links with the Near East, the Balkans and Central Europe.

Cylindrical Vessel First half of the 3rd millenium BC Full description Hemispherical Cup Early 3rd millenium BC Full description

Vessel 4th millenium BC Full description Binocular-shaped Vessel Second half of the 4th millenium BC Full description