Marija Gimbutas - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Marija Gimbutas (Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

, January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

February 2, 1994), was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

and Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

and mythological

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

interpretation. Her conclusions that Neolithic sites in Lithuania and across Europe pointed to long-term stable egalitarian societies with women at the center materially and spiritually earned a mixed reception by other scholars, but became a keystone of the matriarchal studies movement and the Goddess movement

Goddess movement

The Goddess movement is an overall trend in religious or spiritual beliefs or practices which emerged out of second-wave feminism, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s...

Early life

Gimbutas was born as Marija Birutė Alseikaitė to Veronika Janulaitytė-Alseikienė and Danielius Alseika in Vilnius

Vilnius

, the capital of Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

. Her parents were members of the Lithuanian intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

, a social class

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

which rose from the farming class during imperial Russian rule. Her mother received a doctorate

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

in ophthalmology

Ophthalmology

Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the eye. An ophthalmologist is a specialist in medical and surgical eye problems...

at the University of Berlin in 1908 and became the first female physician in Lithuania, while her father had received his medical degree

Doctor of Medicine

Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...

from the University of Tartu

University of Tartu

The University of Tartu is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu is the national university of Estonia; it is the biggest and highest-ranked university in Estonia...

in 1910. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gimbutas' parents had founded the first Lithuanian hospital in the capital. During this period, her father also served as the publisher of the newspaper Vilniaus Žodis and the cultural magazine Vilniaus Šviesa and was an outspoken proponent of Lithuanian independence during the war against Poland

Polish–Lithuanian War

The Polish–Lithuanian War was an armed conflict between newly independent Lithuania and Poland in the aftermath of World War I. The conflict primarily concerned territorial control of the Vilnius Region, including Vilnius , and the Suwałki Region, including the towns of Suwałki, Augustów, and Sejny...

. Gimbutas' parents were connoisseur

Connoisseur

A connoisseur is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts, cuisines, or an expert judge in matters of taste.Modern connoisseurship must be seen along with museums, art galleries and "the cult of originality"...

s of traditional Lithuanian folk arts and frequently invited contemporary musicians, writers, and authors to their home, such as Vydūnas

Vydunas

Wilhelm Storost, artistic name Vilius Storostas-Vydūnas , mostly known as Vydūnas, was a Prussian-Lithuania teacher, poet, humanist, philosopher and Lithuanian...

, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas

Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas

Juozas Tumas, also known by the pen name Vaižgantas , was a prominent Lithuanian writer, Roman Catholic priest, social activist, literary historian, and one of the founders of the Party of National Progress. He wrote novels, short fictional pieces, and non-fiction...

, and Jonas Basanavičius

Jonas Basanavicius

Jonas Basanavičius was an activist and proponent of Lithuania's National Revival and founder of the first Lithuanian language newspaper Aušra. He was one of the initiators and the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the 1905 Congress of Lithuanians, the Great Seimas of Vilnius...

. With regard to her strong cultural upbringing, Gimbutas said:

I had the opportunity to get acquainted with writers and artists such as Vydunas
Vydunas
Wilhelm Storost, artistic name Vilius Storostas-Vydūnas , mostly known as Vydūnas, was a Prussian-Lithuania teacher, poet, humanist, philosopher and Lithuanian...

, Vaižgantas
Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas
Juozas Tumas, also known by the pen name Vaižgantas , was a prominent Lithuanian writer, Roman Catholic priest, social activist, literary historian, and one of the founders of the Party of National Progress. He wrote novels, short fictional pieces, and non-fiction...

, even Basanavičius
Jonas Basanavicius
Jonas Basanavičius was an activist and proponent of Lithuania's National Revival and founder of the first Lithuanian language newspaper Aušra. He was one of the initiators and the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the 1905 Congress of Lithuanians, the Great Seimas of Vilnius...

, who was taken care of by my parents. When I was four or five years old, I would sit in Basanavičius's easy chair and I would feel fine. And later, throughout my entire life, Basanavičius's collected folklore remained extraordinarily important for me.

Gimbutas settled in the temporary capital of Lithuania

Temporary capital of Lithuania

The temporary capital of Lithuania was the official designation of the city of Kaunas in Lithuania during the interwar period. It was in contrast to the declared capital in Vilnius , which was under Polish control from 1920 until 1939...

of Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

with her parents in 1931, where she continued her studies. That year, her parents separated and she lived with her mother and brother, Vytautas, in Kaunas. Five years later, her father died suddenly. At her father's deathbed, Gimbutas pledged that she would study to become a scholar: "All of a sudden I had to think what I shall be, what I shall do with my life. I had been so reckless in sports—swimming for miles, skating, bicycle riding. I changed completely and began to read."

For the next few years, she participated in ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

expeditions to record traditional folklore and studied Lithuanian beliefs and rituals of death. She graduated with honors from Aušra Gymnasium in Kaunas in 1938 and enrolled in the Vytautas Magnus University

Vytautas Magnus University

Vytautas Magnus University ) is a public university in Kaunas, Lithuania. The university was founded in 1922 during the interwar period as an alternate national university...

the same year, where she studied linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

in the Department of Philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

. She then attended University of Vilnius to pursue graduate studies

Graduate school

A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...

in archaeology under Jonas Puzinas, linguistics, ethnology

Ethnology

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

, folklore and literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

. In 1941, she married architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

Jurgis Gimbutas. The following year, she completed her master's thesis, "Modes of Burial in Lithuania in the Iron Age", with honors.

Gimbutas lived through great turmoil in her homeland during the Second World War, which was under successive Soviet and Nazi occupation from 1940–1941 and 1941–1943, respectively. A year after the birth of their first daughter, Danuté, in June 1942, the young Gimbutas family fled the country in the wake of the Soviet re-occupation, first to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

and then to Innsbruck

Innsbruck

- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...

and Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

. In her reflection of this turbulent period, Gimbutas remarked, "Life just twisted me like a little plant, but my work was continuous in one direction." In 1946, Gimbutas received a doctorate

Doctorate

in archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, with minors in ethnology

Ethnology

and history of religion, from Tübingen University with her dissertation "Prehistoric Burial Rites in Lithuania" (in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

), which was published later that year. While holding a postdoctoral fellowship at Tübingen the following year, Gimbutas gave birth to her second daughter, Živilé. The Gimbutas family left Germany and relocated to the United States in 1949.

Career

After arriving in the United States, Gimbutas immediately went to work at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

translating Eastern European archaeological texts. She then became a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. In 1955 she was made a Fellow of Harvard's Peabody Museum

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, and is particularly strong in New World ethnography and...

Kurgan hypothesis

In 1956 Gimbutas introduced her Kurgan hypothesis
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis is one of the proposals about early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language...

, which combined archaeological study of the distinctive Kurgan
Kurgan
Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....

burial mounds with linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

to unravel some problems in the study of the Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...

(PIE) speaking peoples, whom she dubbed the "Kurgans"; namely, to account for their origin and to trace their migrations into Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. This hypothesis

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...

, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...

.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Gimbutas earned a reputation as a world-class specialist on the Indo-European Bronze Age

Bronze Age Europe

The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic, it starts with the Aegean Bronze Age 3200 BC...

, as well as on Lithuanian

Lithuanians

Lithuanians are the Baltic ethnic group native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,765,600 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their native language...

folk art

Folk art

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

and the prehistory

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

of the Balts

Balts

The Balts or Baltic peoples , defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east...

and Slavs, partly summed up in her definitive opus, Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (1965). In her work she reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her backgrounds in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, ethnology

Ethnology

, and the history of religions

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

, and challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization.

As a professor of archaeology at UCLA from 1963 to 1989, Gimbutas directed major excavations of Neolithic

Neolithic

sites in southeastern Europe between 1967 and 1980, including Anzabegovo, near Štip

Štip

Štip is the largest urban agglomeration in the eastern part of the Republic of Macedonia, serving as the economic, industrial, entertainment and educational focal point for the surrounding municipalities. As of the 2002 census, the Štip municipality alone had a population of about 47,796...

, Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

and Sitagroi

Sitagroi

Sitagroi is a village and a former municipality in the Drama peripheral unit, East Macedonia and Thrace, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Prosotsani, of which it is a municipal unit. Population 5,266 . The seat of the municipality was in Fotolivos...

and Achilleion

Achilleion (Thessaly)

Achilleion is an early Neolithic site in Thessaly, Greece. It was partly excavated by the American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. She claims to have reached aceramic layers, similar to those at Argissa Magoula, but this interpretation has been disputed due to the small extent of the...

in Thessaly

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

(Greece). Digging through layers of earth representing a period of time before contemporary estimates for Neolithic habitation in Europe — where other archaeologists would not have expected further finds — she unearthed a great number of artifacts

Artifact (archaeology)

An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...

of daily life and of religious cults, which she researched and documented throughout her career.

Late feminist archaeology

Gimbutas gained unexpected fame — and notoriety — with her last three books: The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974); The Language of the Goddess (1989), which inspired an exhibition in Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...

, 1993/94; and her final book, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991), which presented an overview of her speculations about Neolithic

Neolithic

cultures across Europe: housing patterns, social structure, art, religion, and the nature of literacy.

The Civilization of the Goddess articulated what Gimbutas saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

- and woman-centered (gynocentric), and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal ("androcratic") culture which supplanted it. According to her interpretations, gynocentric (or matristic) societies were peaceful, they honored homosexuals

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, and they espoused economic equality

Economic egalitarianism

Economic egalitarianism is a state of economic affairs in which equality of outcome has been manufactured for all the participants of a society...

.

The "androcratic", or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the other hand, invaded Europe and imposed upon its natives the hierarchical

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

rule of male warrior

Warrior

A warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...

s.

Gimbutas' work is housed at OPUS Archives and Research Center

OPUS Archives and Research Center

OPUS Archives and Research Center holds the archival collections of scholars in the fields of mythology, depth psychology and archetypal psychology. The archival collections housed at OPUS include: Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Joseph Wheelwright,...

, along with those of her colleague, mythologist

Mythology

Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...

, at the Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library on the campus of Pacifica Graduate Institute

Pacifica Graduate Institute

Pacifica Graduate Institute is an accredited, for-profit American graduate school with two campuses near Santa Barbara, California. The institute offers master's and doctoral degrees in the fields of psychology, mythological studies, and the humanities....

in Carpinteria

Carpinteria, California

Carpinteria is a small oceanside city located in southeastern Santa Barbara County, California, east of Santa Barbara and northwest of Ventura. The population was 13,040 at the 2010 census, down from 14,194 at the 2000 census....

, just south of Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

. The library includes Gimbutas' extensive collection on the topics of archaeology, mythology, folklore, art and linguistics. The Gimbutas Archives house over 12,000 images personally taken by Gimbutas of sacred figures, as well as research files on Neolithic cultures of Old Europe.

In 1993, Marija Gimbutas received an honorary doctorate at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. On 2 February 1994, Gimbutas died in Los Angeles. Soon afterwards she was interred in Kaunas' Petrašiūnai Cemetery

Petrašiunai Cemetery

Petrašiūnai Cemetery is Lithuania's premiere last resting place formally designated for graves of people influential in national history, politics, arts, and science.- Location :...

Influence

Gimbutas's theories have been extended and embraced by a number of neopagan

Neopaganism

Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...

authors. Gimbutas did identify the diverse and complex Paleolithic and Neolithic female representations she recognized as depicting a single universal Great Goddess

Great Goddess

Great Goddess refers to the concept of an almighty goddess, or to the concept of a mother goddess, including:*Great Goddess, anglicized form of the Latin Magna Dea*Great Goddess, anglicized form of the Sanskrit Mahadevi, the Shakti sum of all goddesses...

, but also as manifesting a range of female deities: snake goddess, bee goddess, bird goddess, mountain goddess, Mistress of the Animals, etc., which were not necessarily ubiquitous throughout Europe.

In a tape entitled "The Age of the Great Goddess," Gimbutas discusses the various manifestations of the Goddess which occur, and stresses the ultimate unity behind them all of the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

as feminine.

In 2004, filmmaker Donna Read and neopagan author and activist Starhawk

Starhawk

Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...

released a collaborative documentary film about the life and work of Gimbutas, Signs Out of Time.

Assessment

Joseph Campbell

and Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu

Montague Francis Ashley Montagu was a British-American anthropologist and humanist, of Jewish ancestry, who popularized topics such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development...

each compared the importance of Marija Gimbutas' output to the historical importance of the Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...

in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyph

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

s. Campbell provided a foreword to a new edition of Gimbutas' The Language of the Goddess (1989) before he died, and often said how profoundly he regretted that her research on the Neolithic cultures of Europe had not been available when he was writing The Masks of God.

Criticism

Anthropologist Bernard Wailes told the New York Times that he considers Dr. Gimbutas "immensely knowledgeable but not very good in critical analysis. [...] She amasses all the data and then leaps from it to conclusions without any intervening argument." He said that most archaeologists consider her to be an eccentric. This assessment was corroborated by female colleagues of Dr. Gimbutas.

David Anthony has disputed Gimbutas's assertion that there was a widespread matriarchal society prior to the Kurgan incursion, and pointed out that Europe had hillforts and weapons, and presumably warfare, long before the Kurgan. A standard textbook of European prehistory corroborates this point, stating that warfare existed in neolithic Europe, and that adult males were given preferential treatment in burial rites.

American humanities scholar Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia

Camille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984...

described Gimbutas as the "Pollyanna of poppycock, with her Mommy goddess tales conveniently exalting her Lithuanian ancestors into world-class saintly pacifists."

Two early critics of the "Goddess" theory were Andrew Fleming and Peter Ucko

Peter Ucko

Peter John Ucko FRAI FSA was an influential English archaeologist, noted for being the Professor Emeritus of Comparative Archaeology and also the former Executive Director of University College London's Institute of Archaeology. He was also noted for his organisation of the first World...

. Ucko, in his 1968 monograph Anthropomorphic figurines of predynastic Egypt warned against unwarranted inferences about the meanings of statues. (For example, early Egyptian figurines of women holding their breasts had been taken as 'obviously' significant of maternity or fertility, but the Pyramid Texts revealed that in Egypt this was the female sign of grief.)
Fleming, in his 1969 paper "The Myth of the Mother Goddess", questioned the practice of identifying neolithic figures as female when they weren't clearly distinguished as male, and took issue with other aspects of the "Goddess" interpretation of Neolithic stone carvings and burial practices.

Gimbutas' attempts at deciphering Neolithic signs as ideograms, in The Language of the Goddess (1989), received the stiffest scholarly resistance of all her speculations.

The 2009 book Knossos and the prophets of modernism by Cathy Gere examines the political influence on archaeology more generally. Through the example of Knossos

Knossos

Knossos , also known as Labyrinth, or Knossos Palace, is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and store rooms close to a central square...

on the island of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

, which had been (incorrectly) represented as the paradigm of a pacifist, matriarchal and sexually free society, Gere shows that archaeology can easily slip into reflecting what people want to see, rather than teaching people about an unfamiliar past.

External links

Marija Gimbutas website
Marija Gimbutas' "The Balts" e-book
OPUS Archives and Research Center
Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library
Gimbutas biography written by her co-worker Joan Marler
Mavericks of the Mind. Interview with Professor Gimbutas
Goddess History by Marija Gimbutas
Signs Out of Time documentary on the life of the late archaeologist Marija Gimbutas
Kristina Berggren and James B. Harrod, "Understanding Marija Gimbutas": a response to criticism
http://www.debunker.com/texts/goddess_rem.html Robert Sheaffer
Robert Sheaffer
Robert Sheaffer , in Chicago, IL is a freelance writer and a prominent investigator of unidentified flying objects, Christianity, academic feminism, and many other subjects...

's debunking of Mother Goddess theories] - includes a good summary of scholarly criticisms of these theories.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early life

Career

Kurgan hypothesis

Late feminist archaeology

Influence

Assessment

Criticism

See also

External links