mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== The Furor Over Gimbutas So polarized has this debate become that, as Wendy Griffin has observed, "[Gimbutas'] theories tend to be judged as either absolutely true or absolutely false..." It is impossible to mention her work in academia without being caught up in a heated dispute; a positive mention is immediately assumed to indicate total agreement with every interpretation Gimbutas ever wrote, and to warrant heated attack. In this charged atmosphere, the content of her work invariably gets lost, and the documentation she provided is never evaluated. By any account, Marija Gimbutas had an illustrious career as a major 20th-century archaeologist and a primary founder of modern Indo-European studies. She excavated sites of the Vinca, Starcevo, Karanovo and Sesklo cultures. Her ability to read sixteen European languages enabled to her to read virtually all the archaeological literature on both sides of the Cold War split, a crucial skill since most key publications in her study area were written in eastern European languages. (She translated many of them for Harvard University during her early years in the U.S.) It was Gimbutas who laid pivotal groundwork for integrating archaelogical data with linguistic studies of Indo-European origins. Her model for Indo-European origins is still the leading theory in the field. Its basic outlines are still upheld -- minus the Goddess interpretations -- by her former student J.P. Mallory, now one of the top authorities in the field. Eller acknowledges the "tremendous linguistic expertise" Gimbutas possessed, and her "encyclopedic knowledge of Central and Eastern European archaeological sites that permitted her to speculate effectively on 'big picture' questions." However, she doesn't explore Gimburas' reasoning and completely sidesteps her heavily footnoted analysis of why she thinks the kurgan-builders were invaders, and why patriarchal. Eller never describes Gimbutas' analysis in its own right. Instead she uses a pastiche of descriptions by her detractors and supporters to assail it. She declines to compare the work of Gimbutas to theories of the archaeological establishment, claiming that it would be "ultimately unfair to all parties involved. There is no archaeological consensus..." and anyway, everyone has an agenda, even the traditionalist men. (No kidding, but what happened to the thorough debunking promised in the introduction?) Still, this author insists that the argument that IE spread from steppes through military conquest "is completely speculative." At this point Eller resorts to outright misrepresentation. She writes, "As J.P. Mallory summarizes, 'almost all of the arguments for invasion and cultural transformations are far better explained without reference to Kurgan expansions'." Reading this came as a shock, because my understanding of Mallory's position is quite different. I had to look it up. Sure enough, he says the opposite: "One might at first imagine that the economy of argument involved with the Kurgan solution should oblige us to accept it outright. But critics do exist and their objections can be summarized quite simply --" and here follows the phrase Eller so misleadingly cites. In fact Mallory spends pages laying out the evidence for a Pontic-Caspian steppe origin for the Indo-Europeans: "the present formulation of this theory owes much to the publications of Marija Gimbutas who has argued for over 25 years that the Proto-Indo-European homeland should be identified with her Kurgan tradition." He explains that the region she proposes (southern Ukraine/Russia) "evidences all the attributes of a putative Indo-European society reconstructed from linguistic evidence.... a warlike pastoral society, highly mobile..." which expanded into Europe. In support of the invasion theory, he notes key evidence of change in Balkan mortuary practice: there appear alien burials morphologically identical to those on the steppe. These are generally confined to males and are accompanied by weapons -- arrows, spears and knives... The rite of suttee, the sacrificial execution of a woman on the death of her husband, is indicated in some burials suggesting the patriarchal character of the warrior pastoralists who superimposed themselves on the local agricultural populations. [Mallory, 183-4, 239 Other changes occur: population displacement (in every direction but east), abandonment of tell sites, dissolution of the fine painted ceramic production, and "infusion of a new physical type into the Danube region which can easily be traced back to the steppe region." Mallory calls this "something of a Balkan 'dark age'," and further writes of "unequivocal evidence" for steppe intrusions into the Balkans in the mid-3rd millennium BCE. [Mallory, 251] All this is straight out of Gimbutas. Mallory does not follow Gimbutas in every detail (for example, he disagrees with her analysis of the northern Globular Amphora cultures) but he draws heavily on her synthesis of archaeological and linguistic studies. Her influence is also strong among eastern European scholars. The prominent Russian archaeologist Nikolai Merpert wrote in 1997 that "generally, new archaeological data continues to confirm the conception of Marija Gimbutas concerning the Indo-Europeanization of southeastern Europe." [in Marler, Joan, In the Realm of the Ancestors, Paradigm, Manchester CT, 1997, p. 76] Cynthia Eller, on the other hand, is dismissive: "Neither is there any positive evidence that the Kurgans from the Russian steppes were an exceptionally brutal, supremely patriarchal people." She makes no mention of the women executed for burial with the dominant males around whom these kurgan graves are centered, nor of the fact that women were not buried in kurgans in their own right.* At this point, I started to question if she had actually read Gimbutas' extensive documentation of these "suttee"-burials. Civilization of the Goddess details their appearance in the Sredny Stog and Yamnaya steppe cultures, and their westward spread with the kurgan graves. *(I have seen more than one attack on Gimbutas for calling the kurgan cultures (of circa 4500-3000 BCE) patriarchal, on the grounds that burials of women warriors have been excavated (from circa 600-200 BCE). The near-certain cultural discontinuity during this 3000-year time gap is simply ignored, as if these were the same culture.) Eller concludes that Gimbutas' thesis is a "house of cards," and that there is no evidence that Indo-European conquest brought about a more patriarchal social order in the Balkans. Her omission of the kurgan burials with sacrificed women is striking in light of a suggestion she makes elsewhere in the book. While claiming that there is no real evidence for "matriarchy," Eller facetiously proposes an example for the kind of evidence that would really prove female "dominance": a rich woman buried with murdered men! (Actually such burials did occur in Sumeria, but in patriarchal times, as the law codes document.) The archaeological evidence demonstrates that the kurgan-builders belonged to a male-dominated society, but Eller refuses to discuss that evidence. (It is buried in a short footnote.) Once more, her projection of a patriarchy-in-reverse shows that Eller has failed to grasp the basic points made by the feminist historians she is attacking. Both conservatives and post-modernists like to scold refractory feminists about evidence and certainties. Their pretense to disinterested objectivity reminds me of what Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western Civilization: "I think it would be a very good idea." It is true that many feminists have seized on Marija Gimbutas as an academically viable feminist prehistorian. ItÕs understandable, since most women don't have access to the higher echelons of academia, and even less to a white-male-dominated field like archaeology. The accusation is often repeated that Gimbutas made interpretations without supporting evidenceÑunlike other archaeologists. This is just not credible. Interpretation goes on all the time, and it is charged with political ramifications. Brian Hayden, one of Gimbutas' most vociferous critics, has gone out on a long theoretical limb with his claim that Old Europe was dominated by Big Men. But interpretation of ÒprincelyÓ or ÒpriestlyÓ complexes are never as controversial, even in the absence of all evidence, as calling female figurines goddesses. Jean-Paul Mohen's attempts to contort west European megalithic societies to his preconceptions would be funny if they weren't so depressingly typical of stuff I've read for years: "The standardized design of neolithic houses indicate a largely egalitarian society: but could this not have included a dominant family, even if it lacked some or all the material signs of power?" Mohen also assumes the megaliths were the seat of power of a chief endowed with divine authority. For all the glaring flaws in his Indo-European origin hypothesis (and it has attracted much criticism, from both linguists and archaeologists) Lord Colin Renfrew has never encountered the contemptuous response that Gimbutas received. (In his version, it is the Indo-Europeans who bring agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and who are responsible for the civilization of neolithic Old Europe. Not coincidentally, this interpretation is congruent with cherished notions of Indo-European superiority.) Women scholars who challenge doctrines of gender hierachy can expect a much harsher reception. Naomi Goldenberg vividly illustrates what Gimbutas was up against in her description of a 1972 symposium she attended in Italy. She was deeply impressed by Gimbutas' learned, precise presentation, but found other participants not only did not share her enthusiasm but didn't take her work seriously, laughing behind her back. By contrast, a Swedish archaeologist who had dismissed Gimbutas out of hand (while commenting to Goldenberg that "She used to be quite a sexpot") was applauded for a lecture that Goldenberg considered "one of the more absurd papers of the conference," based only on his speculation that Norse priests had stood on two dents in a rock. [in Marler, 1997, 43] Eller dismisses charges that male scholars put down Gimbutas for advocating matricentric and goddess worship. Well... yes -- she was seen as passé, condescended to, and ignored rather than debated. But then, asks Eller, why did earlier archaeologists who "made extensive claims for prehistoric goddess worship -- and even for a female priesthood" -- retain a high standing in their field? A puzzling question: who does she mean, what did they have to say, and why are they missing from her historiography of the subject? The reference is apparently to O.G.S. Crawford, Gordon Childe, and Jacquetta Hawkes. The first two held back from interpreting symbolism in megalithic European sites for several decades, while the anthropological reaction against "matriarchy" was still fresh. By 1938 Jacquetta Hawkes was chafing under admonitions to withhold her ideas about a widespread megalithic goddess: "caution has been enjoined and it must be observed." [Hutton, Ronald, "The Neolithic great goddess: a study in modern tradition,"Antiquity, 1996, p 94] Hawkes broke her silence in 1945 with a book describing the megalith builders as worshippers of the Great Goddess, a religion spread from the Balkans and Canaan via the Mediterranean. By the 1950s, Crawford, Childe, and Glyn Daniel also advanced theories of a neolithic goddess religion across Europe and west Asia. Ideas about a goddess religion became widespread in the early 1960s, when James Mellaart excavated Catal Huyuk. [INLINE] Although Eller is reticent about it, it seems clear that another wave of "matriarchal" theory swept through in the mid-20th century, this time in the field of archaeology. It appears to have been fueled by the realization, as a result of many 20th century digs, that neolithic iconography was predominately female. Eller acknowledges this second wave (barely) by including an isolated quote from Jacquetta Hawkes (1963): "there is every reason to suppose that under the conditions of the primary Neolithic way of life mother-right and the clan system were still dominant.... Indeed, it is tempting to be convinced that the earliest Neolithic societies throughout their range in time and space gave woman the highest status she has ever known." [History of Mankind , in Eller, p. 34] <<< Mohenjo-Daro, Indus valley By the late 60s, a reaction against interpreting female images as goddesses set in. The "New Archaeology" turned away from cultural analysis to an emphasis on scientific process and technology. The trend was simply to ignore the female figurines, although they were often classified in passing as "fertility idols," "dancing girls," "pretty ladies," and "concubines." Most were squirreled away in obscure journals as tiny, poorly reproduced B&W shots, while warriors got full-page color treatment in The Dawn of Man -style coffee table books. Details were typically omitted about the sites where they were discovered, and in what contexts, even about dates. Most readers aren't even going to notice what's missing amidst the extensive analysis of weapons and tools: how is it possible to evaluate information that's withheld? Amnon ben Tor's The Archaeology of Ancient Israel , Yale, 1992) is a paradigmatic example of this studied inattention and omission. Other than Gimbutas, Eller claims, no other archaeologists support the "matriarchal myth." This is easily disproven by naming a few: Nikolai Merpert in Moscow; Gro Mandt of the University of Bergen; Jiao Tianlong and Du Jinpeng of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Henrietta Teodorova of Bulgaria; and Jeannine Davis Kimball of the University of California at Berkeley, who excavated the famous "Amazon" burials of the Sauromatians at Pokrovka. The range of opinions is not as monolithic as The Myth portrays. Davis-Kimball, for example, has said, "I think Gimbutas may have been wrong about the mother goddess per se. But she may have been right about an underlying, unbroken tradition of female cultic power and wisdom, which has been suppressed since the Middle Ages and especially since the Industrial Revolution." [in Osborn, Lawrence, "The Women Warriors: For Decades, Scholars Have Searched for Ancient Matriarchies. Will They Ever Find One?" Lingua Franca http://www.linguafranca.com/9712/nosborne.html ] There's no question that the dominant paradigm in archaeology is hostile to interpretation of the ubiquitous female figurines as goddesses, and to matristic interpretations of prehistory. Eller writes that most feminist archaeologists and anthropologists are critical of the popular trend toward interpreting the wealth of ancient female images as goddesses. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear from them in this book. (Continued) ............................................. [1]NEXT ------> [2]Whose Interpretation? [3]Deconstructing "Matriarchal Myth" [4]Where's the History? 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