I feel like "nearly life-sized" means they were scaled down, and not just short. They don't have the remains, but they know the average heights of people from the same time and place.
... relief carving is a type in which figures or patterns are carved in a flat panel of wood... The figures project only slightly from the background rather than standing freely
Based on these being slightly more three dimensional, I probably would also have called them statues. I am not an archeologist though, so you may be on to something.
If someone made a table and said it was “nearly life-size,” every rational person would say, “So, a smaller table then?” No human is the same size, even within tightly-controlled groups.
If there’s a noticeable difference in scale it’s not “nearly” life-size then.
And the Wikipedia article you reference is about woodcarving. Try this:
There are pictures of what look like statues, but they are considered reliefs because they were carved out of the unmoved rock, rather than built out of displaced stones as a statue would be.
Guys, don’t be in such a rush to defend bad grammar. AI or human, it’s poorly written.