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Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas

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Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas Anatomy of a Backlash Charlene Spretnak! ! Special Issue 2011!! ! ! ! !!!!!!!! ! ! ! !!!!! ! ! !!!!!!!!Volume 7! ! Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas 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Marija Gimbutas’ Pioneering distancing themselves from a caricature of Work in Five Areas Gimbutas’ work they termed “outdated”—that they had made a number of fresh discoveries Anyone who assumes that material published and conclusions about Neolithic societies which under her own name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. © Institute of Archaeomythology 2011 Journal of Archaeomythology 7: x-xx 1 ISSN 2162-6871 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. © Institute of Archaeomythology 2011 Journal of Archaeomythology 7: x-xx 2 ISSN 2162-6871 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
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