Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene

Spretnak!

! Special Issue 2011!! ! ! ! !!!!!!!! ! ! ! !!!!! ! ! !!!!!!!!Volume 7! !

Charlene Spretnak

Introduction: Marija Gimbutas’ Pioneering distancing themselves from a caricature of Work in Five Areas Gimbutas’ work they termed “outdated”—that they had made a number of fresh discoveries Anyone who assumes that material published and conclusions about Neolithic societies which under her own name will stand as an inviolable are, in truth, exactly what Gimbutas had record of her positions might well consider the discovered, observed, and written about decades case of Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994). She is a earlier. An example is “Women and Men at renowned Lithuanian-American archaeologist Çatalhöyük” by Ian Hodder in Scientific who was internationally regarded as occupying American,1 in which Hodder incorrectly informs the pinnacle of her field, having left an his readers that Marija Gimbutas “argued extensive written record of her pioneering work forcefully for an early phase of matriarchal for over half a century (scores of monographs society.”2 In this article on the excavation of and excavation site reports, editorships of Catalhöyük in Turkey, Hodder announces “fresh scholarly journals, presentations at international evidence of the relative power of the sexes” in conferences published in proceedings volumes, that Neolithic settlement—as if it were a break- three hundred fifty articles, and more than through discovery of his own, supposedly twenty volumes translated into numerous disproving the work of Gimbutas. Hodder languages). Yet, particularly after her death, she declares that “the picture of women and men is was relentlessly misrepresented in the extreme, complex” and that “We are not witnessing a pilloried for holding positions that she patriarchy or matriarchy.”3 In fact, that is the repeatedly argued against, and demeaned and exact position taken by Gimbutas: based on the dismissed—beginning first with a small group roughly egalitarian graves and other material of professors and spreading to such an extent evidence, she concluded that Neolithic societies that her work is no longer read, assigned, or of Europe and Anatolia had “a balanced, cited in the classes of many Anglo-American nonpatriarchal and nonmatriarchal social professors of European archaeology. Instead, system.”4 To express this balanced culture, sweeping cartoon versions of her Kurgan theory Gimbutas expressly avoided using the term and her interpretations of Neolithic symbolism “matriarchy,” trying out several other terms. She replace accurate discussions. She is barely !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! mentioned in textbooks and was not only 1 Hodder 2004: 77-83; see especially 78 and 83. toppled but nearly erased entirely. 2 Ibid.: 78. 3 Once that was accomplished, her Ibid.: 83. 4 Gimbutas 1989: xx; 1991: 9, 324, 344; see also “The detractors and their supporters could claim in Fall and Transformation of Old Europe: Recapitulation their own books and articles—usually after 1993,” and other articles in Gimbutas 1997.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

was certainly not a so-called “matriarchalist” as groundbreaking archaeological work in the she has repeatedly been accused. One might following five areas: wonder if Hodder had ever read Gimbutas’ work. In fact, Hodder admitted in a subsequent 1) The Civilization of Neolithic “Old Europe” interview that he had only “read her [early] work as an undergraduate a long time ago” and In 1956, as a Research Fellow at the Peabody that he was probably influenced by “what other Museum at Harvard University, Marija people have said about her and written about her Gimbutas published The Prehistory of Eastern and how that stuff has been used by other Europe, the very first monograph to present a people.”5 comprehensive evaluation of the Mesolithic, Who was this pioneering scholar who has Neolithic, and Copper Age cultures in Russia been the brunt of so many unwarranted attacks? and the Baltic area. Until this volume appeared, I first met Marija Gimbutas in 1979, the year the information available to Western scholars after I had written Lost Goddesses of Early about the prehistory of Eastern Europe was Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. A fragmentary due to linguistic and political few years later, I made a trip to Germany and barriers.6 After thirteen years at Harvard, Croatia, where I wanted to visit a cave on the Marija Gimbutas accepted a full professorship island of Hvar in which an archaeological in European Archaeology at UCLA in 1963 excavation had discovered Neolithic goddess and produced, among other works, studies of figurines, which had subsequently been moved the prehistoric Balts and Slavs, and the to a museum in Zagreb. I went first to the office comprehensive Bronze Age Cultures in Central of the archaeological museum in Zadar, on the and Eastern Europe in 1965, which established Croatian mainland, where I was met with the her world-wide reputation as an expert on the usual lack of interest that commonly greets European Bronze Age. Americans in Europe. Everything changed, Gimbutas recognized that the Neolithic however, when I presented a brief letter of and Copper Age settlements of southeastern introduction from Marija Gimbutas. The two Europe were not primitive versions of later archaeologists were amazed: this insignificant Bronze Age cultures. Instead, these earlier tourist actually knows Gimbutas! They societies were radically different in numerous immediately hastened to get me a chair and aspects from what came later in terms of burial asked cordially if they might be of any patterns (roughly egalitarian between males and assistance. females), the use of a sophisticated symbol Why were the Croatian archaeologists so system (evidence of a systematic use of linear impressed with even my modest connection to signs for the communication of ideas), Professor Gimbutas? Why was she so highly widespread evidence of domestic rituals (with a regarded not only in European circles of vast outpouring of elegant ritual ceramics), the archaeology and paleolinguistics but also in the continual creation and use of anthropomorphic United States, where she was the editor for and zoomorphic figurines (the vast majority Eastern European archaeology at the Journal of being female), and the absence of weapons and Indo-European Studies, which she co-founded? organized warfare. Because of the sophisticated Gimbutas was and is considered a giant in her level of cultural development; the long-lasting, field because, from the early 1950s until her stable societies; their commonalities regarding death in 1994, Marija Gimbutas developed an egalitarian social structure; the well-built

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Ian Hodder in Marler, 2007: 16. 6 Gimbutas 1955: 3.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

houses and community design; the refinement of horses, and artifacts; this type of burial was technologies and material culture; evidence never found in Europe before the arrival of of the development of a script; and inter- Kurgan people). In Gimbutas’ view, these proto- connections through long-distance trade, Indo-European speakers of the steppes, who Gimbutas determined that the non-Indo- shared many common traits (burial customs, European cultures of southeastern and eastern territorial behavior, and patriarchal social Europe during the Neolithic era constituted a structure) infiltrated Copper-Age “Old Europe” civilization, which she called “Old Europe.” in three major waves: c. 4400–4200 BCE, She produced the first overview of this 3400–3200 B.C.E., and 3000–2800 BCE. As civilization in 1991, The Civilization of the these nomadic pastoralists moved into Europe, a Goddess, in which she drew from her extensive cascade of cultural and linguistic changes took knowledge of past and present excavation place which Gimbutas described as a “collision reports. These were available to her because she of cultures” leading to the disruption of the read thirteen languages and traveled extensively extremely old, stable, egalitarian culture as an exchange scholar cultivating professional systems of Old Europe and the appearance of relationships throughout the region. (Most of warlike Bronze Age societies. these site reports are still not translated, so many Gimbutas’ model, initially presented in of her Anglo-American detractors are unable to 1956 and refined over nearly four decades, read them.) She herself was the project director emphasizes that the Indo-Europeanization of of five major excavations of Neolithic sites in Old Europe was a complex process with southeastern Europe. changes rippling in many different ways through a succession of dislocations. In some areas, 2) The Indo-European Transformation of ancient culture sites were abruptly destroyed “Old Europe” and abandoned, often burned down, with indigenous farmers dispersed to the west and Gimbutas combined her extensive background northwest; in other places, indigenous and alien in linguistic paleontology with archaeological traditions coexisted for various periods.8 evidence to develop an explanatory model Gimbutas noted that the Indo-Europeanization initially known as the “Kurgan Hypothesis” in of Old European cultures resulted in various order to locate the homeland of Proto-Indo- local versions of hybrid societies with surviving European speakers and to explain the extensive elements of a non-Indo-European substratum. spread of Indo-European languages and the This explanatory model illuminates various dramatic cultural changes that took place in patterns and elements that have survived in Europe between c. 4500-2500 B.C.E.7 Gimbutas European cultures, even into the modern era.9 coined the term “Kurgan culture” to refer to the The archaeologist James Mallory has noted that pastoral communities found as early as the fifth “the Kurgan theory” has been widely accepted millennium B.C.E. in the Volga-Ural-Caspian and featured in the Encyclopedia Britannica and steppe region north of the Black Sea. She the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique borrowed the term “Kurgan” from a Turkic loan Larousse.”10 In addition, research in historical word into Russian meaning “barrow” (a genetic mapping supports Gimbutas’ theory: in mounded burial site common to early Indo- an interview in 1993 in the New York Times, European cultures, in which a patriarchal !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! chieftain is buried with his possessions, often 8 See “The Fall and Transformation of Old Europe: including his retainers, wives, concubines, Recapitulation 1993” and other articles in Gimbutas 1997. Also see Marler 2001: 89-115 and 2005a: 60. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 See Gimbutas 1997. 7 See Marler 2005a: 53-76. 10 Mallory 1989.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, head of an extensive Eastern and Western European scholars, who historical genetic research project at Stanford have coined a new umbrella term: “the Danube University, stated, “We discovered an area of civilization.”12 population expansion that almost perfectly matched Gimbutas’ projection for the center of 4) A Multidisciplinary Approach called Kurgan culture.”11 Archaeomythology

3) Contextual Archaeology Gimbutas created a multidisciplinary approach for comprehending the non-Indo-European Gimbutas significantly challenged the econo- cultures of Old Europe that went far beyond the metric model that dominated archaeology conventional practices of her time: the cultural- during the post-World War Two era, a time historical phase approach (pre-WWII–1958 and when all the social sciences were attempting to beyond); New Archaeology (or processual become as strictly quantitative and materialist as archaeology; after 1958), and post-modern post- possible so as to appear as “tough-minded” as processualism (initiated in the late 1980s by the natural sciences. A project director of an Hodder). Although Lewis Binford made a plea archaeological excavation, for instance, was in 1962 that the New Archaeology should not expected to focus on the evidence of material neglect culture and belief systems, and although production of the economy, not ritualized post-processualists talk about the importance of figurines, which resist quantification. Gimbutas culture and symbols, all three of the approaches recognized that wearing econometric blinders in practice tend to avoid serious attention to during excavations would surely result in a very religion or any sacral dimension of culture. A narrow and skewed perception of the cultures. colleague at UCLA recalled that Gimbutas was She insisted that it was impossible to understand “the one person who was, even then [1963], these early societies without investigating their revolutionizing the study of East European beliefs, rituals, and worldviews. Through years archaeology. . . [bringing together] archaeology, of studying the ritualized art and artifacts of the linguistics, philology, and the study of non- non-Indo-European settlements, and drawing material cultural antiquities.”13 from her background of studies in ethnology Gimbutas was able to do so because she and the history of religion, Gimbutas realized brought to the work a penetrating intellect and that the central organizing principle of those scholarly training not only in archaeology but cultures was a complex engagement with the also in linguistics and comparative religious processes of regeneration and renewal within a symbolism. (She had earned her doctorate in cosmological religious orientation (embed- three areas of concentration: archaeological dedness, sacrality, immanence), rather than prehistory, the history of religion, and eth- having economic activity as the organizing nology, conferred by the University of Tübingen focus. Today the foundational synthesis and in 1946.) Most archaeologists of her day had a insights of Gimbutas’ work concerning the far narrower training. She also possessed a civilization of Old Europe are still accepted and knowledge and love of sculpture, which allowed are being further developed by numerous her to appreciate the ritualized figurines in ways !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that had escaped earlier archaeologists, who 11 Levathes 1993. See also Cavalli-Sforza 1997 and 2000 in which Cavalli-Sforza and his team continue to maintain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that their research in the area Gimbutas studied verifies 12 See, e.g., Marler 2008. her conclusions, while adding tactfully that research on 13 Recollection by Dr. Jaan Puhvel, Memorial Service for the flow of genes from Anatolia into Europe might at Marija Gimbutas, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, some point verify Renfrew’s theory. UCLA, March 3, 1994 (quoted in Marler 1997:13).

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

commonly disdained the stylized statuettes as of the Goddess. In addition to being the first grotesque Venuses. Such dismissals, of course, archaeologist of Neolithic Europe to focus on reflect the grave limitations of the rationalist, religion,15 she initiated the study of the literal mentality when it encounters the continuity of symbols and metaphors in ritualizing, symbolizing mind. European religion, mythology, and folklore, A senior archaeologist who was a which she continued in The Living Goddesses in specialist in the pre-Indo-European Vin!a 1999 (published posthumously and edited by culture at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Miriam Robbins Dexter).16 Today this type of Arts in Novi Sad, the late Bogdan Brukner, archaeological work is called focusing attention recalled in 2002 the revolutionizing effects of on “visual metaphor.” Gimbutas’ leader-ship when he was a young In spite of these impressive member of an excavation team she headed in accomplishments in five areas, many 1969-71. The approach taken by Gimbutas was archaeologists in North America, Britain, and very exciting to the young archaeologists Germany—influenced by the (orchestrated) because she was the first person to ask questions “hearsay” in the field after her death, to which about the meanings of the art and symbolism Hodder referred—now routinely assure students and to bring in anthropological insights and as well as journalists that everything Gimbutas interdisciplinary parallels. Brukner noted that wrote must be “dismissed.” In truth, the rapid Gimbutas was not only an excellent excavator sea change with respect to the status of but brought a very sophisticated, nuanced, and Gimbutas’ pioneering shaping of the field of insightful perspective to the investigation of non-Indo-European archaeology was extra- symbolization and cultural development. Most ordinary. The sudden shift was driven by a importantly, she brought a cosmological context handful of archaeologists and provides a case to the inter-disciplinary approach she was study of the politics of the social sciences and developing.14 its distorting effects on the creation of knowledge. 5) The Symbol System of Old Europe The Three Stages of a Backlash Since a comprehensive study of Old European symbolism did not yet exist, Gimbutas turned According to Dale Spender in Women of Ideas her attention to an intensive investigation of the and What Men Have Done to Them, wealth of Neolithic artifacts, especially the ritual artifacts, sculptures, and symbols found in These techniques [of control] work by Neolithic cultural contexts throughout southeast initially discrediting a woman and helping to Europe. Her initial study resulted in The Gods remove her from the mainstream; they work and Goddesses of Old Europe in 1974 by becoming the basis for any future (republished in 1982 with the title as it discussion about her; and they work by originally appeared on the manuscript, though keeping future generations of women away disallowed by the editor: The Goddesses and from her.17 Gods of Old Europe). This work on the symbol system was followed in 1989 by The Language

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Bogdan Bruckner, unpublished interview which took !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! place at the Liguria Study Center, Bogliasco, Italy, June 15 Gimbutas 1980a. 7, 2002, conducted by Joan Marler, Executive Director of 16 Gimbutas 1989. Also see Marler 2001 and 2000. the Institute of Archaeomythology. 17 Spender 1982: 32.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

Phase One of a Backlash contrary: for at least two millennia after farming technology entered Europe from western During the last several years of Gimbutas’ life, Anatolia, around 7000 B.C.E., there is no trace as she was undergoing grueling cancer therapies of proto-Indo-European language in Europe— at the UCLA Medical Center, efforts to undercut and there is no trace of Indo-European language her standing in the field of archaeology began to in western Anatolia at the time the farmers appear. These were not merely scholarly began to migrate into Europe. Rather, proto- disagreements; rather, they continually urged Indo-European language appears only later, at readers to “dismiss” Gimbutas. The strongest the time when genetic and archaeological initial source of a categorical negativity was a evidence indicates that peoples from the North one-sided rivalry nurtured in the mind of a long- Pontic-Volga region (the “Kurgans,” as time colleague, Colin Renfrew, a professor of Gimbutas called them) began to move east into archaeology at Cambridge University. He had Europe, around 4400 B.C.E.19 Moreover, assured her for years, jokingly it seemed, that he Renfrew’s hypothesis fails to account con- would find a way to prove her widely accepted vincingly for the sudden change in the burial theory wrong and apparently thought he had patterns, the sudden disappearance of the non- finally found that way in paleolinguistics (an Indo-European symbol system, and the sudden area of expertise not his own). In 1987, Renfrew appearance of constructed fortifications. It also presented his counter-theory (later downgraded cannot account for the way that Indo-European to a hypothesis) about Neolithic Europe in a technology and implements of warfare appear in book titled Archaeology and Language: The Neolithic Europe.20 Puzzle of Indo-European Origins.18 A year At that point Gimbutas still held a before it was published, Gimbutas related to me, preeminent status in European archaeology, but Renfrew had visited her in her home in Topanga Renfrew had something she did not: a politically Canyon near Los Angeles and had declared, powerful position in the academic infrastructure while pointing to a large table on which the of the field of archaeology, emanating from the chapters of Gimbutas’ current manuscript were endowed professorship he held for years at laid out, that when his own book, came out, “all Cambridge University (he is now Professor this will be swept away.” Gimbutas was Emeritus); his directorship of an affiliated surprised by this declaration and intention from institute of archaeological studies; his indirect her old friend, but she did not imagine what was but effective influence over the Cambridge about to happen in the next few years. After all, archaeological journal Antiquity, and the either his book would be sound or it would not. archaeological books published by Cambridge In fact, Renfrew’s book failed to have the University Press; and his power to ease or block effect he had hoped for. Briefly, his counter- the way of young and mid-career archaeologists hypothesis asserts that proto-Indo-European with regard to recommendations, employment, language came into Europe not through migrations of pastoralists from the Eurasian !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 steppes but, rather, via farmers gradually Skupkin (1989) found Renfrew’s argument “non- evidential”; Wescott (1990), a linguist who is vice- migrating into southeastern Europe from president of the Association for the Study of Language in western Anatolia (present-day Turkey). As Prehistory, noted Renfrew’s “relative ignorance of several prominent paleo-linguists pointed out in linguistics,” which “not only muddles him but dampens reviews, Renfrew’s counter-hypothesis ignores his flair for imaginative innovation”; Haarmann (1999) 150 years of paleolinguistic findings to the presented abundant evidence that renders Renfrew’s counter-hypothesis impossible. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 Gimbutas 1988a: 453-456. Also see Gimbutas’ review 18 Renfrew 1987. of Archaeology and Language, 1988b.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

grants, and other recognition. His position of have presented papers explicating all the reasons power caused skeptics to keep silent, elicited that Gimbutas’ Kurgan Hypothesis is far more some early praise from close colleagues, and plausible than Renfrew’s counter-hypothesis.26 allowed him to convince the media that, in spite Even so, Renfrew has written repeatedly in the of the drubbing his counter-hypothesis had introduction to McDonald Institute volumes that received from paleolinguists, it was a “we” in the field of archaeology now reject the courageous triumph of a noble David going up work of Gimbutas. against the “conventional” theory in Indo- Beginning in 1990, Gimbutas was often European archaeology (formulated by the “disappeared” in print. For example, a Canadian looming Goliath, Marija Gimbutas). Thus was archaeologist at McGill University, Bruce he celebrated in mainstream publications such Trigger, told the Canadian magazine Maclean’s as Scientific American, Science News, and the that he thinks Gimbutas’ interpretation of the New York Times, which ran both an admiring non-Indo-European symbol system makes article plus an editorial celebrating Renfrew’s “reasonably good sense,”27 yet when he had “refreshingly iconoclastic approach” and his published A History of Archaeological “robust and economical thesis.”21 Thought28 the previous year with Cambridge Marija Gimbutas was invited to review University Press, he apparently understood what Renfrew’s book in two publications, Current was necessary: he omitted any mention of the Anthropology22 and the Times Literary work of Marija Gimbutas. All twenty of Supplement.23 She stated his argument Gimbutas’ archaeological books, which were accurately and then noted dozens of his then taught in numerous British and European theoretical assumptions and claims that are universities, were omitted from Trigger’s contradicted by the evidence unearthed and history, which featured all of Renfrew’s books. reported by numerous European archaeologists When Renfrew himself co-authored a textbook and by paleolinguists. In a response in Current titled Archaeology in 1994,29 he notes several Anthropology,24 Renfrew skirted around pioneering female archaeologists but makes Gimbutas’ substantive critique and was able to scant mention of Marija Gimbutas except to cite keep it sidelined in the subsequent discourse. from a derogatory article that had been written Renfrew was also able to control the discourse by a graduate student in his department, on his home turf. First, in the Cambridge pronouncing Gimbutas’ work “pseudo- University journal Antiquity Gimbutas is once feminist.”30 A few years later, Alison Wylie, again erroneously depicted as having written of author of Thinking from Things: Essays in the “a perfect matriarchy” in Old Europe.25 Second, Philosophy of Archaeology, included many of as director of the McDonald Institute for Renfrew’s books in her bibliography but not one Archaeological Research at Cambridge book by Gimbutas. Also, when Renfrew wrote a University, Renfrew selected contributors to its book about interpreting archaeological art, scholarly publications, often from Russia, who Figuring It Out, an area Gimbutas had were invited to come to his institute and write pioneered, he omitted any mention of her among papers that support any minor argument with the archaeologists who had worked in this area. Gimbutas’ Kurgan Hypothesis. At times, A second type of “launch” article in this however, even these hand-picked participants initial phase of what became a backlash against !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Renfrew 1989; Bower 1995; Stevens 1991; Wade 1989. 26 Comrie 2002. Also see Dergachev 2002: 93-112. 22 Gimbutas 1988a. 27 Trigger quoted in McGee 1990. 23 Gimbutas 1988b. 28 Trigger 1989. 24 See, e.g., Renfrew 1988: 437. 29 Renfrew and Bahn 2000. 25 Meskell 1995: 74-86. 30 Ibid.: 218-19.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

Gimbutas was “Old Europe: Sacred Matriarchy of Prehistory,” in which he dismissed Gimbutas’ or Complementary Opposition?” by Brian comprehensive overview of the cultures of Old Hayden. At the conference on “Archaeology Europe, The Civilization of the Goddess, as one and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean” of the “fads and fancies” of academia.33 on the island of Malta in 1985, Hayden had not During the 1990s, which became the been invited as a presenter by the convener, but white-heat period of the backlash against he mailed in a paper, which was read aloud in Gimbutas, two of Hayden’s colleagues, his absence. (Renfrew was present, but it is not Margaret Conkey and Ruth Tringham, jointly known whether he encouraged the convener to taught a course at the University of California at have Hayden’s unsolicited paper read to the Berkeley titled “Archaeology and the Goddess,” audience and included in the proceedings in which all of Gimbutas’ work was presented volume.) Rather than engaging with reasons for as emphatically wrong. They have written that a different reading of particular symbols, the dual impetus for initiating that course was a Hayden’s paper presented a mocking, raw- phrase that caught their eyes in the descriptive toned, and aggressive attack on Gimbutas’ publicity issued by HarperSanFrancisco prior to interpretation of the non-Indo-European symbol the publication of Gimbutas’ Civilization of the system, which many in attendance felt was Goddess in 1991, presenting the book as “the demeaning and contemptuous.31 At the end of definitive answer to prehistory.” This phrase by the reading of Hayden’s paper, the audience, a publicist at HarperSanFrancisco particularly including Gimbutas, sat in stunned silence. ired Tringham, she later wrote, because she had Hayden subsequently wrote additional factually recently read Jean-Paul Bourdierso, so was problematic but aggressive dismissals of freshly convinced that any work not situated Gimbutas.32 explicitly in ambiguity must be rejected. Moreover, Conkey and Tringham saw the Phase Two of a Backlash undercutting of (certain, targeted) authority figures as an inherently feminist task on their A couple of negative, even aggressive, articles part.34 The strangest aspect of their course, do not by themselves constitute the beginning of though, was their position that the a backlash. Only if others take up the theme and archaeological work of Gimbutas is tainted join in the toppling does the effort gain because her books were read by a particular momentum. group, the “Goddess movement,” some of Taking up both Renfew’s call to consider whose members then cited Gimbutas’ Gimbutas’ work “outdated” and Hayden’s archaeological findings in overly broad ways. critique that it was insufficiently male-oriented, Conkey and Tringham actually took class time Brian Fagan wrote an extensive review in from archaeology to teach disapprovingly a Archaeology magazine in 1992, “A Sexist View variety of materials from the “Goddess !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! movement.” (Although I have long felt that a 31 Hayden (1986: 21), e.g., berated Gimbutas over the few non-archaeologists irresponsibly overstated meaning of the pillar symbol; he was apparently ignorant the case that is carefully presented in Gimbutas’ (as Gimbutas was not) of the long cultural history of the symbol of the sacred bough/Tree of Life/sacred pillar- books, that is obviously not the fault of trunk/Maypole in indigenous, nature-based European Gimbutas. For instance, when Gimbutas wrote religious traditions, which were later blended with that the cultures of Old Europe were “peaceful,” Christianity, because he insisted that “all common sense she meant that the archaeological evidence and psychiatric wisdom would associate it instead with the phallus or masculine forces.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 Hayden 1998. For a corrective response, see Marler 33!Fagan 1992: 14.! 1999. 34 Conkey and Tringham 1996: 225, 228.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

indicates that the settlements were not routinely asserts that Gimbutas imagined the Kurgan sacked; she did not ever write that the residents invasions into Old Europe from the steppes of Old Europe did not have any arguments in because Stalin’s invasion of the Baltic countries daily life or constituted a utopia.) at the time of World War II planted the idea in In their class and in subsequent articles, her mind. Meskell then repeats Hayden’s such as “Archaeology and the Goddess,” problematic examples supposedly proving that “Cultivating Thinking / Challenging Authority,” there actually were fortifications in Old Europe. and “Rethinking Figurines,”35 Conkey and She repeats Conkey and Tringham’s clearly Tringham asserted that Gimbutas was an erroneous feminist criticism that Gimbutas is inadequate archaeologist because she did not “essentialist” because she supposedly sees insert “probably” into each of her conclusions women’s power as purely biological but not and because (after they vastly oversimplify her cultural. Like Conkey and Tringham, Meskell complex, multi-staged study of the dislocations ends her article by nobly positioning herself as a in Old Europe as the waves of Indo-Europeans feminist unafraid to “contest theories presented arrived) they declared her work to be by women which seem to espouse pro-female supposedly an oversimplification that “lacks notions” and to challenge “a gendered complexity.” They also accuse her of pandering superiority.”36 to the “Goddess movement,” an entirely To the delight of those archaeology erroneous charge I shall address presently. professors who found Conkey and Tringham The other main “pile-on” article in Phase and Meskell convincing, a sociologist named Two, “Goddess, Gimbutas and ‘New Age’ Cynthia Eller wrote a derogatory book about the Archaeology” (1995) was written by Lynn women’s spirituality movement in 2000, The Meskell, who was then a graduate student in Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, in which she Renfrew’s department, studying with Hodder, refers to all the women’s spirituality authors, and who had received and makes reference to and also to Gimbutas, as “the matriarchalists”— the manuscript of Conkey and Tringham’s even though Eller admits in the book that she article (then “in process”). After presenting a knows that most do not hold the view that facile caricature of “the Goddess movement” as Neolithic Europe was a “matriarchy.” It’s a “fad and fiction” that “seeks justification” in merely a convenient label, she explains, so archaeology, Meskell erroneously states that she’ll use it! The many problems with factual Gimbutas “dismissed” any figurines from Old correctness in her book have been identified in Europe that were male; Meskell then actually reviews.37 asserts that Gimbutas perceived highly At a conference on “Gender and ritualized female figurines as Goddess because Archaeology” at Sonoma State University in Bachofen, Freud, and Jung had “asserted that October 2002, presenters included Conkey, devotion to female deities appeared early in Tringham, and Eller. Eller gave a slide human evolution.” Without mentioning the presentation mocking Gimbutas and the historical genetic mapping and all the excavated “Goddess movement” with dripping sarcasm, material evidence indicating that Gimbutas’ which caused most of the archaeologists in the Kurgan theory is correct, Meskell repeats audience to whoop with derisive laughter. Renfrew’s label that such an explanation Several archaeology professors then gave (supposedly based on Bachofen, Freud, and enthusiastic testimonials expressing gratitude Jung) is “outdated.” Moreover, she further for Eller’s book, which many of them actually !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Conkey and Tringham 1994, 1996; Tringham and 36 Meskell 1995. Conkey 1998. 37 See, e.g., Marler 2005b.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

used in their archaeology classes, for what they “Telephone,” as various aspects become assumed is an accurate depiction the “Goddess intensified and enlarged with seeming authority. movement,” Gimbutas’ work, and the purported For example, Meskell states in passing at the causal link between them. During these beginning of her negative article that Gimbutas testimonials, Gimbutas was labeled a had a “recognized academic standing and long “fundamentalist matriarchalist”—in spite of the history of fieldwork in southeast European fact that Gimbutas herself had rejected in print sites,”39 but that fact gets lost in the “parroting” the label “matriarchy” for the non-Indo- articles outside the field, in which the esteemed European cultures. scholar is treated as a buffoon who never had During Phase Two, other archaeologists any status whatsoever in archaeology. jumped in. For instance, John Chapman asserted An example is the article “The Women in a biographical essay on Gimbutas in the book Warriors” by the journalist Lawrence Osburne Excavating Women that he felt duty-bound to in Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life note that her identifying fertility themes in some in late 1997, which opened with his thematic of the non-Indo-European symbols occurred at set-up: “For decades, scholars have searched for the time, by his reckoning, when she had ancient matriarchies. Will they ever find one?” reached menopause, “a time when her own When he gets to the section on Marija Gimbutas personal fertility is disappearing and her own (but why was she in an article about children leave home.”38 Why is the theme of matriarchies, as she clearly wrote that the non- fertility, so common among indigenous cultures, Indo-European cultures were not matriarchies?) regarded in non-Indo-European archaeology as Osburne tells readers that she “found little of so improbable as to be a foolish projection of value in the rigors of her field,” that she “made Gimbutas’ supposedly overwrought grand claims about ancient matriarchy,” that she imagination? Besides, she saw birth as only one had a “belief in a lost female Arcadia,” and that part of the cycles of regeneration and her archaeological work “gained only a small transformation that were expressed in the foothold in academe,” being supported artifacts and symbols of Old Europe. “primarily among radical feminist scholars like herself.” After repeating Meskell’s idea about Phase Three of a Backlash the influence of Stalin’s invasions on Gimbutas’ archaeological reasoning, Osborne assures As Dale Spender noted in 1982, a repetition of readers, “The Stone Age, by contrast, was, in disparaging comments—through articles in her conceit, an era of irreproachable feminine which the initiators cite each other—eventually piety.” Completely ignorant of Gimbutas’ gains currency, acquiring over time the status of undiminished status among the archaeologists of common knowledge. This “parroting” is exactly Central and Eastern Europe, who are the most what happened regarding the backlash against familiar with the hundreds of site reports in the work of Marija Gimbutas. Writers, various languages from which she drew, sometimes in archaeology but often in fields far Osburne concludes by declaring that removed, repeated items from Meskell’s or “Gimbutas’ influence was limited to a handful Conkey and Tringham’s widely circulated of scientists and a handful of sites in eastern articles. In the “parroting” stage, though, the Europe.”40 inaccuracies and the charges are exaggerated Even Feminist Studies published an beyond even the initial targeting articles. It is otherwise carefully researched, insightful article rather like the children’s game called !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Meskell 1995:74. 38 Chapman 1998. 40 Osburne 1998.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

in 2009 on “Goddess: Women’s Art and cancer). We visited her, held gatherings to wish Spirituality in the 1970s” by an art historian, her well, expressed our gratitude, and offered Jennie Klein, which, oddly, contained a section other acts of friendship. on Marija Gimbutas, whose work was not What can one say about such fervent widely known in the women’s spirituality misrepresentations? There was a time, not so movement until after 1982.41 The section is long ago, when no self-respecting scholar would extremely derogatory, identifying Gimbutas as dream of writing about another’s work without “the ‘high priestess’ of the women’s spirituality having read the primary sources, rather than movement in Southern California” (false: she relying on distorting hit pieces. Perhaps the was not even in the women’s spirituality same standards once applied in science movement, let alone presiding as a “high journalism, but when Michael Balter wrote a priestess”) and describing her as “flamboyant” book in 2005 about the ongoing excavation at (false: she was reserved and very European, Çatalhöyök, The Goddess and the Bull, he made gracious and kind). Drawing from Meskell’s the strange decision, as he has stated in an erroneous article, Klein assured readers that interview, to simply publish as fact all the Gimbutas did not care about empirically demeaning comments about Gimubtas conveyed verifiable evidence, thought all figurines were to him conversationally by the excavation team female and most structures temples (false: see (Hodder, Tringham, and others). Still, Balter her books), and had little support among stated after his book was published that he finds archaeologists (false: see previous sections). somewhat suspect (“going beyond the bounds of Klein also wrote that Gimbutas’ only support fair argumentation”) the refusal by the Hodder was from a group of feminists for whom “she group (including Meskell) to acknowledge became a hagiographic figure for these women” “even stylistic continuities between the Upper (false: Most European archaeologists did agree Paleolithic ‘Venus’ figurines, the so-called with her; we in the women’s spirituality goddess figurines that have been found at movement were a very small portion of her Çatalhöyük and other Neolithic sites, and readers; and we did not regard her as a saint; we similar imagery from the Bronze Age, such as considered her an extremely knowledgeable from Minoan Crete and the Myceneans” (a archaeologist who had kindly answered our continuity that Gimbutas noted and wrote questions – and subsequently was, for several about).42 years, struggling for her life against lymphatic As the backlash continued to careen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! around the intellectual grapevine, the classicist 41 Marija Gimbutas’ book Gods and Goddesses of Old Mary Beard, in the course of reviewing a book Europe (1974) was out of print for several years before on the role of women in Minoan culture in the the University of California Press published the new edition (with the corrected title, matching the original New York Review of Books in 2009, mentioned manuscript) in 1982. In 1982, I included an article by Marija Gimbutas only to dismiss “the frankly Gimbutas, “Women and Culture in Goddess-oriented Old dotty ideas of matriarchal goddesses floated by Europe,” in the anthology I edited, The Politics of Robert Graves and Marija Gimbutas.”43 The Women’s Spirituality (Doubleday), which went through following year McGill University Press several printings in the 1980s; I excerpted this article from Gimbutas 1982b, “Old Europe in the Fifth published a book titled Sanctifying Misandry: Millennium B.C.: The European Situation on the Arrival !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of Indo-Europeans,” delivered at the conference on “The 42 Michael Balter, cited in Rigoglioso 2007. Also see Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millennia B.C.,” Balter 2005. To his credit, Balter corrected in the University of Texas at Austin, Feb. 4-5, 1980. I put a new paperback edition some of the erroneous, derogatory title on the excerpted version. My abridgement of descriptions of Gimbutas conveyed to him by the Hodder Gimbutas’ article, with my title, was then reprinted in group. another anthology, Plaskow and Christ 1989. 43 Beard 2009: 61.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man by previously recognized. These facts were hardly Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson, unknown to Gimbutas: she wrote about the which, according to the publisher’s description, anomalous aspects of the Varna necropolis in exposes “a feminist conspiracy theory of Civilization of the Goddess,44 noting that the history” based on the supposedly imaginary richly endowed graves at Varna were the first Indo-European transformation of Neolithic indication of social change within an otherwise Europe (citing popular writers who interpreted egalitarian context. She attributed this or drew from Gimbutas’ work, such as Riane development to a rapid rise of trade activities Eisler and Dan Brown), which supposedly between Old Europe inhabitants of the Black requires the hatred of all men. The book further Sea coast and the encroaching populations exposes a purported cultural plot by man-hating moving westward from the Dnieper-Volga “goddess feminists and their academic steppe. The appearance of weapons and supporters” to “restore the goddess and ornaments of male status in the Varna graves therefore paradise as well.” Clearly, these two reflect the influence of trade between Varna and scholars of religion were inspired by the the warrior cults of the nomadic, Indo-European backlash orchestrated by a few archaeologists steppe cultures; the Varna graves do not adopt (plus perhaps the books by Cynthia Eller) and the Indo-European style of a chieftain in a have built their case on it. barrow. Moreover, far from being ignorant of Inside the field of archaeology itself, the the complexity of the period of cultural standards for integrity of scholarship (reading transformation from 4500-2500 BCE, Gimbutas the primary sources) seemingly continue to be explicitly addressed it in an article in the waived whenever someone targets the work of Journal of Indo-European Studies in 1980.45 Gimbutas. The magazine Archaeology Still, acting once again as if Gimbutas’ actual published an article in 2011 titled “The New writings about the Varna graves do not exist, the Upper Class” by Andrew Curry (a journalist on claim is made in Archaeology magazine that her their staff). In it Curry claims that new attention observations and insights have now been by Western archaeologists to the gravesites in entirely supplanted.46 Varna, a Neolithic excavation site along the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria, will change all the received thinking about the Copper Age Issues on the Table for Discussion (technically the transitional Chalcolithic, or Eneolithic, Age), which lingers under the For those who created or subscribe to the “shadow” of the foundational work of backlash, there are no issues on the table at Gimbutas. Curry falsely asserts that Gimbutas present concerning the work of Marija thought Old Europe was “run by women” and Gimbutas. Even most of the archaeologists who was a “feminist utopia”; he even repeats found the backlash articles to be offensive in Meskell’s charge that anti-Soviet sentiment is tone, incorrect or exaggerated in content, and the secret reason Gimbutas presented all the overblown in effect have taken the safe course archaeological evidence that nomadic Indo- of keeping silent in the intervening years. European cultures from the steppes of the Gimbutas, however, had an abiding faith in Dnieper-Volga basin moved aggressively into science and predicted shortly before her death Old Europe. Regarding Varna, Curry notes that that it would take thirty-five years for her there are four graves with a rich array of metalwork objects, that there were copper mines !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44!Gimbutas 1991: 338, 352-401.! and copper production nearby, and that some 45!Gimbutas 1980b.! tells at other sites have populations larger than 46 Curry 2011: 40-45.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

insights, observations, and conclusions to separation of sacred from profane that is become accepted by the field. We are now characteristic of Western belief systems.”48 In nearly half way through that period. Just in case truth, however, Gimbutas’ writing emphasizes archaeological evaluations of her work might that that sort of Greek dualistic metaphysics is someday take place without prejudice, it is exactly what was not present in the non-Indo- useful to now reconsider the straw-man European cultures. Moreover, the field of arguments and charges that were made against archaeology did not heed Conkey’s and her in the 1990s in light of various ideological Tringham’s prohibition: the study of religion currents of that time and in light of changes in and ritual is now a compelling area of study. academia since then. Truly, several major Examples of books in this relatively new area developments in academia are moving in her include The Archaeology of Cult and Religion, direction, not least of which is that archaeology an interdisciplinary anthology edited by Peter has finally become somewhat more Biehl and François Bertemes with Harald Meller interdisciplinary. Gimbutas wrote in 1980 that (entirely different editions in 2001 and 2007) and Archaeology, Ritual, Religion by Timothy the period of 4500–2500 B.C. (calibrated Insoll (2004). chronology) is one of the most complex and In her pioneering work in the religious least understood in prehistory. It is a period orientation of Old Europe, Gimbutas perceived which urgently demands a concerted effort by 47 various artifacts in the non-Indo-European scholars from various disciplines. symbol system as expressing central truths, which she grouped as follows: Life-Giving, The She not only called for but pioneered such an Renewing and Eternal Earth, Death and effort, which is gradually coming to pass. Regeneration, and Energy and Unfolding. She Consider, for example, the following five areas presented these groupings, with numerous of study. examples of excavated artifacts in each category, in The Language of the Goddess, 1. Archaeology and Religion which was the first major archaeological book on religion, following her initial exploration of Religion, sacrality, and ritual were long “myths and cult images.”49 Gimbutas used the considered peripheral to the proper concerns of term “Goddess” to refer to the diverse visual archaeology. Even the post-processualists, and folkloric imagery of metaphor and symbol, nominally interested in symbols, disdain behind which lies a complex of concepts metanarratives such as a unifying metaphysical expressing an awareness of embeddedness, perception that informs a culture. They also participatory consciousness, and the immanence oppose—more correctly, in my view—the of the sacred: “the holistic and mythopoeic projection back in time of concepts that were perception of the sacredness and mystery of all culturally constructed in the historic West; there is on Earth.”50 Encompassing the however, they apply that caution in such ways cosmological drama of the changing seasons, as to deny the possibility of any elements of the bounty of the land, and the cycles of endless cultural continuity from prehistoric times regeneration, “The Goddess in all her forward. For example, Conkey and Tringham manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all urge readers to dismiss Gimbutas for using “terms such as religion, temple, shrines, and rituals that imply, among other things, the clear !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Conkey and Tringham 1994: 217. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Gimbutas 1974, 1982. 47 Gimbutas 1980b: 1-2. 50 Gimbutas 1989: 321.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

life in Nature.”51 In fact, she is Nature: for the Kurgan invasions.”55 While it is true that both Insoll’s book and the anthology edited by The multiple categories, functions, and Biehl and Bertemes have furthered the symbols used by prehistoric peoples to discussion of religion in archaeology, the case express the Great Mystery are all aspects of can be made that it was Gimbutas’ the unbroken unity of one deity, a Goddess 52 groundbreaking study of the religious who is ultimately Nature herself. orientation of an excavated civilization that forced the debates of the subject today within Though Gimbutas felt that all depictions of the the field. Goddess were an expression of one orientation, Given the scope of Gimbutas’ work on the she stated that it was an open question whether 53 religious orientation of Old Europe, numerous there was literally one Goddess or many. By particulars—or even the entire orientation she the way, Goddesses in World Mythology, a perceived—can be debated. However, as Insoll biographical dictionary published by Oxford notes, an accepted approach for archaeologists University Press in 1993, lists 11,000 goddesses considering religious orientations is to put forth and fifty-eight categories of their powers and the plausible premise that prehistoric cultures attributions. Why are Gimbutas’ detractors so may have had much in common with indigenous certain that it is “absurd” to propose that any of cultures, which may possess a cultural these deeply held cultural symbols had roots in continuity of some sort from prehistoric times, prehistoric religion? often a nature-based, metaphysical sense of In Insoll’s book, Archaeology, Ritual, embeddedness in the cosmological and eco- Religion, he devotes only two paragraphs to logical “Great Mysterious.” Moreover, in many Gimbutas in which he dismisses all her early cultures around the world the powers of contributions to the subject, citing “extensive” nature were perceived metaphysically to have charges against her by Conkey and Tringham, female qualities, presumably because of the Meskell, and others who repeated them; easily observed parallels: women have a red tide foremost, he agrees with their assertion that that flows in rhythm with the cycles of the Gimbutas’ work must be ignored because her moon; they can swell up like the full moon; and style of presenting her conclusions was too 54 they can bountifully produce (babies and milk), authoritative and “too literally claimed.” (This as does nature. Drawing on her background in was the style of her generation of ethnography and the history of religion, as well archaeologists.) Surprisingly, Insoll also states as archaeology, Gimbutas pioneered this ap- as fact Conkey and Tringham’s remarkable proach in archaeology, which is clearly situated claim in 1998 that there is “no ‘firm evidence’ in the category Insoll describes. Can the other side of the debate negate this highly plausible !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! orientation, other than simply denying it? 51 Ibid. Then there is the matter of whether 52 Gimbutas 1991: 223. excavated artifacts demonstrate a continuity of 53 Marija Gimbutas, “The World of the Goddess,” public concepts, not only through time periods but also lecture delivered at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, 1990; VHS videotape was made across spatial regions. Insoll notes that the by the Green Earth Foundation, P.O. Box 327, El Varano, “particularistic” approach and the post- CA 95433. In this talk, Gimbutas states that the images of processual approach eshew suppositions about the Great Goddess may have roots in two groups: totemic continuity, holding that only a study focused on animal-goddesses (hybrid woman-animal), and the the excavation of one particular settlement can procreative sacral female (perhaps the Original Clan Mother). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 Insoll 2004: 57. 55 Ibid.; Insoll cites from Tringham and Conkey 1998.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

be trusted to yield solid, nonspeculative data. be informed that there are two sides (or more) to On the other side of the debate are a growing the contemporary debates regarding “continuity number of archaeologists who find the strong vs. no continuity” and “metaphysical meanings and extensive evidence of continuity to be vs. household/ production-oriented meanings” compelling. Writing in the 2001 edition of an concerning the interpretation of the ritualized anthology titled The Archaeology of Cult and figurines from the non-Indo-European cultures. Religion, Svend Hansen, for instance, remarks For those interested in examining the evidence in “Neolithic Sculpture: Some Remarks on an for continuity of visual symbols and concepts Old Problem” on “the stunning uniformity of across space and time during the Neolithic era, a representational types and design principles of recent book is relevant: Introducing the Neolithic ‘idols’ in the Balkans.”56 He refers to Mythological Crescent: Ancient Beliefs and this continuity, or “uniformity,” as “an Imagery Connecting Eurasia with Anatolia by indication that the figurines transferred distinct Harald Haarmann and Joan Marler. The ideas. In this sense they seem to be a religious “Mythological Crescent” they posit is “a broad phenomenon.”57 Although Hansen sets aside zone of cultural convergence that extends from Gimbutas’ work on the erroneous grounds that the ancient Middle East via Anatolia to she saw the figurines as denoting a “matriarchy” southeastern Europe, opening into the wide and a “pointed” projection of a mythological cultural landscape of Eurasia.”60 Regarding the Great Goddess (apparently he was not familiar second, and related, debate—interpretations of with her specific use of that term; see above), he the figurines of non-Indo-European cultures—a goes on to state that the majority of scholars recent book articulates an insightfully context- today agree with Gimbutas that “the figurines rich method, Interacting with Figurines: Seven are objects with a broadly based magic-religious Dimensions in the Study of Imagery, by Harald meaning”58—though the concept he uses, Haarmann.61 “magic,” has several connotations and may not A stumbling block in these discussions be a good fit with Gimbutas’ perception of has been the connotation of “mythology” in the nature-based religion. Hansen also asserts, minds of most people schooled in modernity, contra those of Gimbutas’ critics who claim that including most archaeologists. Because the figurines were merely fertility fetishes, Gimbutas wrote of “mythology” with regard to the nature-based religious concepts of Old The widespread interpretation of the figurines Europe, detractors repeatedly deduce that she as symbols of female ‘fertility’ has no must have been under the spell of Arthur Evans, empirical basis. Indeed, it is an unhistorical Jane Ellen Harrison, Robert Briffault, and/or formula. Already the small group of Robert Graves and that she was, therefore, Paleolithic figurines shows several different erroneously projecting back through time the types, which likely represent different 62 meanings. From the Paleolithic to the soap opera on Mount Olympus. On the Neolihic period, a continuity of production is 59 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! evident. 60 Harrmann and Marler 2008. Also see Poruciuc 2010. 61 Haarmann 2009. Haarmann states, “These sculpted Certainly students of archaeology should figures must be understood within the context of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! cultures in which they were fashioned. Are they religious 56 Hansen 2001: 41. in nature? Perhaps. Are they concrete expressions of past 57 Ibid. Also see Haarmaan (1995) on cultural continuity generations fashioned by the present? At times. Are these of iconography, symbolism, and writing. Also see Marler figures, most of them female, incarnations of goddess 2003: 9-24. divinities? Could be. Are they living components of the 58 Hansen 2001: 38. daily lives of their creators? Definitely.” 59 Ibid.: 45. 62 See, e.g., Hutton 1997: 91-99.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

contrary, what Hansen and others call the Danube script) throughout Neolithic and “magic-religious” quality of many of the Enolithic southeastern Europe. Articles address Neolithic artifacts is what Gimbutas (and most the debate over whether particular signs are scholars of indigenous religions) call ritual or domestic symbols, the “non-verbal “mythopoetic,” the sense of the mythic messages on anthropomorphic figurines,” and a orientation as a vibrant experiential sense of the report on a database with 3200 entries of “signs concrete and the abstract, the immanent and the and symbols of spiritual life.”64 transcendent, and the visible and the ineffable at One of the articles, “The Danube Script once in the sacral lived world. This orientation and Its Legacy,” engages with the subject of the is expressed in myriad cultural variations, all of continuity of this symbol system over space and which express visually and otherwise the time.65 While many archaeologists have come to immediacy and the power of the natural world agree with Gimbutas’ perception of continuity as alive and sacred. As archaeology continues to of symbols from the Paleolithic era over develop a relationship with the history of thousands of years into the Neolithic era, she religion, no doubt their common misunder- also perceived what might be called a grand standing about “mythology” will be cleared up. continuity of these symbols and signs from the Paleolithic and the Neolithic into the historic 2. The Symbol System of Old Europe periods and all the way into the modern era. Gimbutas demonstrated in The Living It is generally agreed by archaeologists that the Goddesses that several patterns of symbols from linear markings, signs, and symbols in common pre-Indo-European religion are evident in the use in the cultures of Old Europe were most subsequent religions of the Greeks, the likely used to transmit meaning, but do they Etruscans, the Basques, the Celts, the Germanic constitute a form of “writing”? Gimbutas peoples, and the Balts. Sometimes this survival thought so and perceived a script in the symbol of symbols occurred via the indigenous goddess system. In order to further the discussion of how in various European cultures whose character- to define “script” and how to approach an istics and symbols were merged with those of agreement of what qualifies as “writing,” the the Virgin Mary when Christianity moved first international symposium on the subject, northward from the Mediterranean. This and an accompanying exhibition of artifacts,63 fascinating subject will no doubt continue to be was held in 2004 in Novi Sad, Serbia, sponsored examined and debated. jointly by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and After Gimbutas published the first of her Arts and the Institute of Archaeomythology. copiously illustrated books on the symbol Both the proceedings volume of the Serbian system of Old Europe, two male art historians symposium, Signs of Civilization: Neolithic theorized that all of the ritually stylized Symbol System of Southeastern Europe, and a sculptures were actually about nothing more catalogue from a subsequent exhibition at the than foreplay for the men during the sex act— Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu, Romania, The soft porn for the neolithic male.66 Gimbutas Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing in responded eloquently on the mythopoetic Southeastern Europe, present articles on the orientation in “Vulvas, Breasts, and Buttocks of history of the study of what Gimbutas first the Goddess Creatress: Commentary on the identified as the “Old European script” and on recent scholarly developments in the study of the widespread usage of it (now called the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Marler and Dexter 2009; Marler 2008. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Haarmann 2008: 61-76. 63!!See Starovi" 2004. 66 Onians and Collins 1978.

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Origins of Art.”67 Subsequently, Douglass their bodies.71 This is an example of the new Bailey asserted in the Cambridge Archaeo- “cognitive archaeology,” which uses the mind logical Journal that “the forms of graphic shaped by modernity (their own) as their point displays of female sexual parts (breasts, vulvae) of reference rather than the indigenous mind and capabilities (pregnancy) in figurine form” explicated variously in ethnography, on which were actually “displays” that “functioned as Gimbutas based her cognitive archaeology sexual insults” of a subordinate group.68 decades ago. (Surprisingly, Conkey and Tringham actually praise this highly speculative hypothesis.69) 3. The Cause of the Indo-European Similarly, Hodder has argued, as cited by Transformation of Neolithic Europe Renfrew, for the assumption of universal patriarchy by asserting that As nearly all the archaeologists working on the non-Indo-European sites of southeastern Europe the elaborate female symbolism in the earlier agree, the evidence indicates that Indo-European Neolithic expressed the objectification and language, social structure, technologies, and subordination of women. … Perhaps women culture entered Old Europe via three waves of rather than men were shown as objects migrating Indo-European pastoralists from the because they, unlike men, had become objects 70 Eurasian steppes (specifically the Middle Volga of ownership and male desire. basin, the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, and the Don and lower Dnieper River basins), which These assertions are saturated not only with a is the evidence-based explanation framed by deep attachment to the ideal of universal Gimbutas’ Kurgan theory. As noted earlier, patriarchy but are also influenced by the social- Renfrew’s idea (now known as the constructionist premise that any relationship Farmer/Diffusion Hypothesis) has been rejected (expressed by the figurines, for instance) must by paleolinguists and most Indo-European have been about displaying either power or archaeologists. Also, the alternative explanation submission because all relationships are to be for the burned-down and suddenly abandoned seen as primarily power-laden, or “political.” It Neolithic settlements put forward by is difficult for scholars of that persuasion to Tringham—that those people probably burned consider the possibility of relationships of down their own settlements72—has not attracted metaphysical and cosmological import. In fact, a wide following. Still, for archaeology the social sciences in general have often professors who teach the debate between the demonstrated great difficulty grasping sacrality, Migration Hypothesis and the Farmer/Diffusion especially when it is expressed through a Hypothesis, a relevant assignment would be blending of physical and abstract perceptions. Gimbutas’ final articulation of her hypothesis in For example, Bailey asserted in 2010 that a an article written a few months before she died: “modern” approach to the figurines of Old “The Fall and Transformation of Old Europe: Europe concludes that they are not religious but, Recapitulation 1993.”73 Also relevant is a 2002 rather, are objects through which the people interview with the late Bogdan Bruckner, an “perceived their appropriate appearance within archaeologist with the Serbian Academy of their communities,” not unlike, he notes, the way Barbie dolls influence girls’ thinking about !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Bailey 2010: 124-125. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 Tringham and Krštic 1990; regarding Tringham’s idea 67 Gimbutas 1982d. of the “Burned House Horizon,” see 114-116 and 609- 68 Bailey 1996: 281-307. 615. 69 Tringham and Conkey 1998: 42. 73 Gimbutas 1997: 351-372. Also see Comrie 2002 and 70 Ian Hodder, cited by Renfrew and Bahn 2000: 218-9. Dergachev 2002.

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Sciences and Arts, in which he notes that the reading of Hayden’s text reveals numerous Kurgan theory has become even stronger since problematic uses of archaeological sources.77 Gimbutas died, in light of a vast range of Surprisingly, many feminists have taken evidence subsequently unearthed by himself and the position that any historical evidence of a many other Eastern European archaeologists.74 patriarchal society invading a nonpatriarchal For example, Dergachev’s article, “Two Studies society must be rejected because the preferred in Defence of the Migration Concept,” provides theory of the day is that patriarchy must always detailed evidence that supports Gimbutas’ and everywhere have resulted strictly from Kurgan Hypothesis (and also discusses the internal societal reasons. Sherry Ortner, for weaknesses of the new “narrative” model of example, theorizes in Making Gender, 1996, research as opposed to more rigorous research that patriarchy “arose as an unintended models used by Gimbutas).75 More recently, in consequence of arrangements which were 2011, the archaeologist David Anthony ob- originally purely functional and expedient.”78 served in Archaeology magazine that at Conkey has agreed, noting that “we” (feminist hundreds of tells all across the western Balkan archaeologists) now think of patriarchy as a by- region radiocarbon dates reveal a similar story: product of technologies and internal social upheavals.79 Evidence of any invasions is There are a lot of radiocarbon dates for 4700, strictly off-limits, yet the notion that there can 4600, 4500, 4300, and then it drops off a cliff. be only one set of causes of patriarchal cultures Something really catastrophic—something 76 worldwide must ignore not only all the evidence culture-ending—happened there. of the patriarchal Indo-Europeanizing of Neolithic Europe via their invading migrations This is exactly as Gimbutas concluded. but also the classic study made by the Within this area, a debate has arisen over anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday in 1981 of whether the pre-Indo-European settlements did the anthropological data on 156 cultures, which or did not have structural fortifications prior to she presented in Female Power and Male contact with the abrupt arrival of the Indo- Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual European horsemen. After studying hundreds of Inequality. Sanday found that the evidence Neolithic site reports, Gimbutas concluded that suggests a variety of social forms based on there were no Indo-European-type fortifications local, ecological, and historical circumstances. before the appearance of steppe peoples. In general, she noted that some cultures Circular ditches may have protected settlements functioned around what she labeled an “inner from wild animals. In the textbook orientation” (nature is a partner; food is Archaeology: The Science of Once and Future obtained rather easily from the earth or sea; the Things, Brian Hayden asserts, contra Gimbutas, forces of nature are sacralized; the social that there were several constructed fortifications structure is non-patriarchal; the origins story in Old Europe. This view is comprehensively involves a goddess (or Original Mother) or a refuted by Dergachev in “Two Studies in divine couple (often Original Mother and her Defence of the Migration Concept” and by male associate); and a reciprocal flow is Marler in the article “Warfare in the European perceived between the power of nature and the Neolithic: Truth or Fiction?,” in which a close power inherent in women, a power dynamic in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Hayden 1992; Marler, n.d. 74 Marler interview with Bruckner, op. cit. 78 Sherry Ortner, cited by Osborne 1998: 55. 75 Dergachev 2002. 79 Margaret W. Conkey, cited from an interview by 76 David Anthony cited in Curry 2011: 45. Osborne in “The Women Warriors,” ibid.

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which men can participate through ritual). The term matriarchy with the understanding that it other cultural orientation Sanday found she incorporates matriliny.81 labeled an “outer orientation” (engagement with nature revolves around seasonal migration and With regard to the continuity of matrilineal the pursuit of large animals (or later on descent and matricentric cultures in Europe, herding); there is a focus on creating weapons Gimbutas further observed: for interpersonal violence among men; the social system is patriarchal; the origins story A strong indication of the existence of centers on a god; and a metaphysics drives men matriliny in Old Europe is the historic to fear and defend against an implicit power that continuity of matrilineal succession in the is “out there” (often associated with female non-Indo-European societies of Europe and Asia Minor such as the Minoan, Etruscan, sexuality).80 In this anthropological schematic, Pelasgian, Lydian, Lykian, Carian in western the Indo-Europeans were a warrior-oriented Turkey, Basque in northern Spain and south- “outer” culture that moved in on a region of west France, and the Picts in Britain before non-Indo-European “inner” cultures. It is the Celts. This influence is also found in Indo- thought that the Indo-European nomadic tribes European-speaking societies—Celts, Teutons, may have moved eastward into Europe from the Slavs, and Balts—who absorbed matricentric steppes for climatic reasons. and matrilineal traditions from the rich substratum of Old European populations.”82 4. The Social System of the Cultures of Old Europe Meskell took Gimbutas to task for “reverse sexism” and for the supposedly far- Gimbutas wrote the following on the social fetched idea that Old Europe was a matrilineal, structure of the civilization of Old Europe: matrifocal, matristic civilization in which “there were no husbands”83—but how well-founded is The earliest civilizations of the world—in such a criticism? In 2002 Clifford Geertz noted China, Tibet, Egypt, the Near East, and in a review of A Society Without Fathers or Europe—were, in all probability, matristic Husbands: The Na of China by Cai Hua, a book “Goddess civilizations.” on the Na, a Burmo-Tibetan-speaking tribal Since agriculture was developed by people in the Yongning hills of Yunnan women [the former gatherers], the Neolithic province of southern China, that the cornerstone period created optimum conditions for the of anthropology, the theory of kinship system survival of matrilineal, endogamous systems inherited from Paleolithic times. During the (which he calls “a culture-bound notion if there early agricultural period women reached the ever was one”) can no longer be accepted as apex of their influence in farming, arts and describing a universal social structure. Both crafts, and social functions. The matriclan variants of kinship theory (“descent theory” and with collectivist principles continued. … We the “alliance model”) have assumed universal do not find in Old Europe, nor in all of the patriarchal family structures and have acted as Old World, a system of autocratic rule by blinders on anthropology—as well as archaeo- women with an equivalent suppression of logy. In fact, many cultures have been observed men. Rather, we find a structure in which the to be matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal, sexes are more or less on equal footing. … I giving great honor and centrality to the clan use the term matristic simply to avoid the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 81 Gimbutas 1991: 324. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 Ibid., 344. 80 Sanday 1981. 83 Meskell 1995: 78, 83.

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mothers, who distribute material wealth and the role of an honored elder, the great clan play a central role in the culture. Among the mother, who was assisted by a council of Minangkabau of West Sumatra in Indonesia, for women.”87 Indeed, a culture’s sense of the example, the anthropologist Peggy Reeves Original Mother, progenitor of all the clans, Sanday noted that the adat ibu (women's may well have been an inspiration for the customary law) refers to a system of symbols metaphysical presence that also incorporated and a set of life-cycle ceremonial practices nature-based and cosmological dimensions, placing senior women at the social, emotional, which Gimbutas called Goddess. aesthetic, political, and economic center of daily Sanday, unlike Gimbutas, has long argued life along with their brothers.84 In many such that the label “matriarchy” should be used for cultures, children are raised in a stable such cultures on the grounds that there is household consisting of their mother and her sufficient anthropological data to require a sisters and brothers. There are lovers (and redefining of the term. In writing the entry on maternal aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and grand “Matriarchy” for the Oxford Encyclopedia of aunts and uncles) but no husbands and wives. A Women in World History (2008), Sanday notes number of women who live or were raised in that such cultures in Polynesia, Micronesia, Mexico, Panama, Saharan Africa, West and South matriarchy is part of a social ontology giving Africa, Northeast India, Southwest India, women control with their brothers over Sumatra, Indonesia, and China traveled to Texas economic resources and political influence. in 2005 to speak about the matrilineal, This system of thought makes women the matrilocal, matrifocal societies in which they originators and performers of practices that authenticate and regenerate or, to use a term live, at the Second World Congress on which is closer to the ethnographic details, Matriarchal Studies, held at Texas State 88 85 that nurture the social order. University at San Marcos. Moreover, in addition to Sanday, several other anthro- Power is “balanced in the sense that it is pologists have also published particularist diffused among those who work in a partnership studies of such cultures since 1993, including to uphold social rules and practices.”89 Sanday’s Maria Lepowsky, Annette Weiner, Shanshan redefinition reflects a “maternal social Du, Yang Erche Namu, and Veronika 86 philosophy” that she and her colleagues have Bennholdt-Thomsen. When one grasps how witnessed closely in action. centrally important the clan mothers were, and In short, Meskell’s criticism of Gimbutas are, to all aspects of their cultures (they are for positing an indigenous European culture sometimes, when performing a ceremony, called with “no husbands”—like Conkey’s and a name that means “Original Mother”), one can Tringham’s charge that Gimbutas was “out- better appreciate Gimbutas’ insight that the dated” to propose that the indigenous cultures of prehistoric personification of the powers and Old Europe had different roles and types of cycles of nature and cosmos as Goddess, often work for the two sexes, and like Cynthia Eller’s sculpted with her attendants, may well “reflect sweeping dismissal in The Myth of Matriarchal !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Prehistory—is stunningly ill founded. 84 Sanday 2008. In a similar vein, the accusation of 85 Papers from the Second World Congress on Matriarchal “essentialist” was repeatedly affixed to Studies are posted on the conference website: www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 86 Sanday 2002; Lepowsky 1993); Weiner 1992; 87 Gimbutas 1991: 344. Shanshan Du 2002; Namu and Mathieu 2003; Bennholdt- 88 Sanday 2008 (online version). Thomsen 2000; Lamu Gatusa 2005. 89 Ibid.

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Gimbutas’ work in the 1990s. It began with honestly accuse her of viewing women as not Conkey and Tringham who claim that being cultural agents and being outside of Gimbutas’ reading of prehistory is so history. “essentialized” that it precludes “an engendered Finally, Gimbutas’ conclusions about Old prehistory” that “envisages women as thinking Europe as a matristic but balanced (roughly and acting people who affect the course of egalitarian) civilization was apparently enough prehistory.”90 The charge was repeated by many to set off alarm bells in the psyche of many male other feminist archaeologists and was also archaeologists and journalists, who reacted with applied to the “Goddess movement,” which angry charges such as “A Sexist View of Gimbutas’ detractors delight in erroneously Prehistory” (Brian Fagan) and “Gyno- conflating with her. For instance, Lucy supremacism” (a journalist writing in the Goodison and Christine Morris (formerly a Chicago Tribune).92 Visceral feelings about the research assistant for Renfrew) state in their utter rightness of patriarchal culture and a male introduction to the anthology Ancient godhead are apparently no more uncommon in Goddesses, archaeology than elsewhere.93 Even Gimbutas’ observation that most of the Neolithic figurines Their biologically essentialist vision is one were female is seemingly received by some which they share with reactionary forces who male archaeologists as an affront that requires have always opposed the emancipation of retribution. women; it serves, as Lauren Talalay has pointed out: “to isolate women outside of history. … If women’s reproductive capa- 5. The Women’s Spirituality Movement bilities are the source of their power, then women remain, to some extent, locked within The backlash required a bête noire with whom an unchanging domestic sphere.91 to tar the eminent scholar by association so they created a depiction of a moronic “Goddess Essentialist is a derogatory term that was movement” that supposedly formed around invented in post-structuralist feminist circles in Gimbutas and her promises of a past “perfect the 1980s to demean any women who noted, matriarchy.” Conkey and Tringham first put say, a connection between female embodiment forth this severely distorted depiction in their and religious honoring in any past or present 1995 article, and Meskell immediately repeated culture; it was claimed that any such honoring it in her article. Repeating the conflation the necessarily limits women to nothing but our following year, Peter Biehl delivered a paper to biology and prevents us from being agents of the European Association of Archaeologists in culture. The “anti-essentialist” scholars accept which he conveyed the danger that archaeology the traditional divide in patriarchal societies was being contaminated by the interest of the between nature and culture, agreeing that any “Mother-Goddess-Movement,” which had sup- association with nature situates one on the posedly corrupted the work of Gimbutas; he wrong side of the chasm. Although I have been proposed an escape from the perilous situation, addressing this straw-man argument since 1991 titling his paper “Overcoming the ‘Mother- (in States of Grace), suffice it to say here that it Goddess-Movement’: A New Approach to the is nonsensical that anyone could read the Study of Human Representation.” Apparently passages cited above from Gimbutas’ writings the exorcism was not entirely successful, about women and culture in Old Europe and though, because Biehl wrote in 2001, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Conkey and Tringham 1994: 219. 92 Margolis 1995. 91 Goodison and Morris 1998: 14. 93 See Goldenburg 1997.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

There is an overriding fear that their will facilitate the restoration of women’s power. [archaeologists’] work will be classified It then follows that the patriarchy will be alongside and somehow equated with Marija dismantled and the lost pre-patriarchal culture Gimbutas’ work on prehistoric figurines and 95 94 can be regained.” Rather, the women’s the so-called “Mother-Goddess-Movement.” spirituality movement is a loosely constituted, highly diverse part of the feminist movement in In 1998 Goodison and Morris repeated, in their which women unsatisfied with patriarchal introduction to Ancient Goddesses, the religions have explored and created numerous unchronological causality asserted by Conkey paths to authentic spiritual experience, including and Tringham (that Gimbutas’ work was “the working within the Abrahamic and other impetus” for the “Goddess movement”), yet religions to transform them; practicing Buddhist none of them ever did a shred of fact-checking meditation (no godhead of either sex); reading of their instrumental assumption. As I explained about the 11,000 known goddesses or the earlier, they got it backwards: the women’s various cultural traditions of female shamans; spirituality movement emerged in the mid- studying the intimate communion with nature in 1970s, as is well documented. That movement traditional native people’s religions; and learned about Gimbutas’ work only in 1982 creating meaningful spiritual practices. By the because that was the year the University of 1990s an academic counterpart was well California Press brought her book Goddesses established, which studies women and world and Gods of Old Europe back into print. It was religions, the cultural history of women’s sacred also the year my anthology, The Politics of arts, and the many philosophical issues that Women’s Spirituality, was published, to which I radiate from a shift to a deeply relational had added at the last minute an article by perspective on religion, culture, history, politics, Gimbutas, in the historical section on the economics, and education.96 perception in numerous cultures of a divine, cosmological presence as female. She did not Reflections on Feminist Process write an article for that anthology but kindly allowed me to include an abridged version of a Beginning in the 1970s feminists entered the scientific paper she had presented to an professions not only to pursue individual careers archaeological conference. The impetus for but to change the destructive ways in which Gimbutas’ moving ahead as quickly as possible business is often conducted in the patriarchal with the two major books she had long planned world of work. In academia, under the veneer of —Language of the Goddess and Civilization of supposedly ethical intellectual discourse and a the Goddess—was her diagnosis of cancer in the carefully deliberative process of framing early 1980s, not the interest of a group of knowledge often lurk the dynamics of a blood feminists. sport. Everyone who has spent any time in Had Gimbutas’ detractors ever used the academia easily recognizes the difference correct name for the women’s spirituality between articles that aim to annihilate movement, the second word in the term might someone’s status and work as opposed to have tipped them off to the extremely broad and articles that acknowledge what seems right and substantive nature of the phenomenon. It is not a group of simpletons who believed, as Meskell !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 Meskell (1995: 82) is citing Tina Passman. asserted, that “the establishment of an originary 96 Several institutions offer an M.A. in Women’s myth on the basis of historical scientific reality Spirituality; to my knowledge, the only doctorate is the Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religion with Concentration in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Women’s Spirituality from the California Institute of 94 Biehl 1996: 59-67. Also see Biehl and Bertemes 2001. Integral Studies, a graduate institute in San Francisco.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

valuable in someone’s work and then argue for a especially knowledge of relevant ethnographic different, or enlarged, perspective or conclusion. studies in anthropology and indigenous The steady drumbeat of Gimbutas must be religion—the more the dismissive articles from dismissed has now influenced an entire the 1990s attacking Gimbutas’ plausibility are generation of young professors. It is shown to be largely underinformed or disappointing to see, all these years later, ideological and baldly competitive. feminist academics employing many of the It is disheartening to see that a small tactics long established in patriarchal dust-ups— group could achieve such a toppling (in order to such as misrepresenting an opponent’s positions subsequently put their own stamp on the field), in order to force them off the discussion table, that so few people seem to consult the original thereby scoring off the targeted person so as to sources referred to in a critique, and that the elevate oneself. Meskell, the youngest of the press can be so easily taken in. When all this anti-Gimbutas authors, often reminds readers feels particularly repugnant, I think of the last that she is writing as a Third Wave feminist, as time I visited Marija, two months before she if the female version of the patriarchal pattern of died. She had a hospice bed set up in her study “killing off the fathers” in a field in order to with its walls of glass through which she could establish oneself is the noble path to take. Her gaze at the beautiful green canyon. Surrounded strange accusation that Gimbutas must be by her books and replicas of non-Indo-European dismissed because her work amounts to Goddess figurines, she was completely calm and “pseudo-feminism”97 is ironic. was confident that everything would turn out all Whether one is grateful or resentful, right regarding her numerous contributions to feminist academics stand on the shoulders of European archaeology. Indeed, she was our intellectual mothers and grandmothers who remarkably happy. Today, when I reflect on all entered the disciplines when they were the aggressive misrepresentations—far more extremely hostile territories for women. Those than she could have imagined during her final pioneering scholars had to produce high-quality days—I cannot share her deep confidence in the work that exceeded that of most of their male course of science. colleagues just to be grudgingly considered Still, it should be noted that some adequate for promotion and grants. Some of archaeology professors have stood up to the those women did even more than excel within backlash forces, have refused to “dismiss” the established parameters of their field; a few, Gimbutas in any way, and actually practice the like Gimbutas, figured out the answer to long- virtue of multivocality, which is much touted by standing questions and broke new ground to but oddly elusive for many of the post- revolutionize their field and significantly processualists: Tristan Carter, for instance, advance the development of knowledge. taught a course on “Archaeology of Prehistory: Speaking in 1990 of Gimbutas’ willingness to In Search of the Goddess” at Stanford take archaeology in new, multidisciplinary University in 2006 in which he provided a directions, the archaeologist Linda Ellis told detailed, in-depth, and appreciative view of Peter Steinfels of the New York Times that Gimbutas’ work and then did the same for “she’s a very brave woman, very brave to step Renfrew and Meskell.99 Perhaps he is a portent over the boundary.”98 As noted above, the more of a post-backlash rebalancing. various streams of multidisciplinary knowledge enrich the perspectives within archaeology— !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 E-mail communication from Mara Keller on March 11, 97 See Meskell 1995: 82-84. 2010; Prof. Keller attended Prof. Carter’s course at 98 Linda Ellis, cited in Steinfels 1990. Stanford University.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

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Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

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_____2003. “The Body of Woman as Sacred Metaphor,” Renfrew, Colin. 1987. Archaeology and Language: The in Il Mito e il Culto della Grande Dea: Transiti, Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. London: Metamorfosi, Permanenze. M. Panza and M. T. Jonathan Cape. Ganzerla, eds., 9-24. Bologna: Associazione _____1988. “Reply to reviews of Archaeology and Armonie. Language.” Current Anthropology 29, 3 (June): _____2005a. “The Beginnings of Patriarchy in Europe: 437. Reflections on the Kurgan Theory of Marija _____1989. “The Origins of Indo-European Languages.” Gimbutas,” in The Rule of Mars: Readings on the Scientific American (October). ! Origins, History, and Impacts of Patriarchy. Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn. 2000. Archaeology: Cristina Biaggi, ed., 53-76. Manchester, Conn.: Theories, Methods, and Practice. London: Thames Knowledge, Ideas, and Trends. and Hudson [third edition].! _____2005b. “The Myth of Universal Patriarchy: A Rigoglioso, Marguerite. 2007. “The Disappearing of the Critical Response to Cynthia Eller’s The Myth of Goddess and Gimbutas: A Critical Review of The Matriarchal Prehistory,” in Pre-historic Goddess and the Bull.” Journal of Archaeo- Archaeology and Anthropological Theory mythology 3: 95-105. Education, Reports of Prehistoric Research Sanday, Peggy Reeves. 1981. Female Power and Male Projects. L. Nikolova, J. Fritz, and J. Higgins, Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality. eds., 6-7. Salt Lake City and Karlovo: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. International Institute of Anthropology.! _____2002. Women at the Center: Life in a Modern _____2007. “Interview with Ian Hodder.” Journal Matriarchy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. of Archaeomythology 3:14-24. _____2008. “Matriarchy,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of _____2008. The Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing Women in World History. Bonnie G. Smith, ed. in Southeastern Europe. Exhibition catalogue, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online version: Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania. http://www.oxford-womenworldhistory.com/entry?entry Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. =t248.e665. _____n.d. “Warfare in the European Neolithic: Truth or Skupkin, Michael. 1989. “Archaeology and Oblomovism: Fiction?” unpublished manuscript. A Review of Archaeology and Language by Colin Marler, Joan, and Miriam Robbins Dexter, eds. 2009. Renfrew.” Epigraphic Society Occasional Pub- Signs of Civilization: Neolithic Symbol System of lications 18. Southeast Europe. Novi Sad: Serbian Academy of Spender, Dale. 1982. Women of Ideas and What Men Science and Arts; Sebastopol: Institute of Have Done to Them. London: Routledge. Archaeomythology. Spretnak, Charlene. 1982. The Politics of Women’s McGee, Patricia. 1990. “Challenging History: Peaceful Spirituality. New York: Doubleday.San Francisco: Women May Have Once Ruled the World.” HarperSanFrancisco. Macleans (February 12).! _____1991. States of Grace. The Recovery of Meaning in Meskell, Lynn. 1995. “Goddesses, Gimbutas and ‘New the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: Harper. Age’ Archaeology.” Antiquity 69, 262 (March): Starovi", Andrej, ed. 2004. Signs of Civilization. 74-86. Exhibition catalogue. Novi Sad: Serbian Academy Namu, Yang Erche, and Christine Mathieu. 2003. Leaving of Sciences and Arts, Novi Sad Branch / Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. World. Boston: Little, Brown. Steinfels, Peter. 1990. “Idyllic Theory of Goddesses Onians, John, and Desmond Collins. 1978. “The Origins Creates Storm.” New York Times (February 13). of Art,” Art History: Journal of the Association of Stevens, William K. 1991. “Early Farmers and the Art Historians I, 1. Sowing of Languages.” New York Times (May 9). Osburne, Laurence. 1998. “The Women Warriors.” Trigger, Bruce G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Lingua Franca 7, 10 (Dec. 1997–Jan. 1998). Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plaskow, Judith, and Carol P. Christ, eds. 1989. Tringham, Ruth, and Margaret Conkey. 1998. Weaving the Visions. San Francisco: Harper “Rethinking Figurines: A Critical View from Archaeology of Gimbutas, the ‘Goddess’ and and Row. ! Popular Culture,” in Ancient Goddesses: The Poruciuc, Adrian. 2010. Prehistoric Roots of Romanian Myths and the Evidence. Lucy Goodison and and Southeast European Traditions, vol. I. Joan Christine Morris, eds. London: British Museum. Marler and Miriam Robbins Dexter, eds. Tringham, Ruth E., and Dušan Krsti". 1990. Selevac: A Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. Neolithic Village in Yugoslavia. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology.

Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak!

______Wescott, Roger. 1990. “Review of Archaeology and Language by Colin Renfrew.” Mother Tongue: Charlene Spretnak is author of Lost Goddesses of Early The Newsletter for the Study of Language in Greece (1978), and is the editor of an anthology, The Prehistory 11 (September). Boston. Politics of Women's Spirituality (1982). In 2011 she Wade, Nicholas. 1989. “Who First Asked for Lox?” The received a lifetime achievement award, the Demeter Editorial Notebook, New York Times (August 27). Award, from the Association for the Study of Women and Weiner, Annette. 1992. Unalienable Possessions: The Mythology. She has written widely on cultural history, Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving. Berkeley and spirituality and religion, feminism, and ecological Los Angeles: University of California Press. philosophy. Her other books include States of Grace Young, Katherine K., and Paul Nathanson. 2010. Sanc- (1991), The Resurgence of the Real (1997), Missing Mary tifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall (2004), and Relational Reality (2011). of Man. Montreal: McGill University Press. ______