Discover

'Marija Gimbutas' (, born Marija Birutė Alseikaitė) (Vilnius, Lithuania, January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles, United States February 2, 1994), was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological interpretation.

Contents

Biography

Career

Assessment

Criticism

Influence on Neo-Pagan movement

See also

References

Sources

Works

External links

Biography

Gimbutas lived through great turmoil in her native Lithuania during the Second World War, and had to flee to Germany in 1944 due to the Soviet re-occupation of her homeland. After earning a PhD in archaeology at Tübingen University in 1946, she left Germany and relocated to the United States in 1949. Gimbutas never forgot her Lithuanian heritage.

Career

After arriving in the United States, Gimbutas immediately went to work at Harvard University translating Eastern European archaeological texts, then became a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. In 1955 she was made a Fellow of Harvard's Peabody Museum.
In 1956 Gimbutas introduced her "Kurgan hypothesis", which combined archaeological study of the distinctive "Kurgan" burial mounds with linguistics to unravel some problems in the study of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples, whom she dubbed the "Kurgans"; namely, to account for their origin and to trace their migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Gimbutas earned a reputation as a world-class specialist on the Indo-European Bronze Age, as well as on Lithuanian folk art and the prehistory of the Balts and Slavs, partly summed up in her definitive opus, ''Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe'' (1965). In her work she reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her backgrounds in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions, and challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization.
As a professor of archaeology at UCLA from 1963 to 1989, Gimbutas directed major excavations of Neolithic sites in southeastern Europe between 1967 and 1980, including Sitagroi and Achilleion in Thessaly (Greece). Digging through layers of earth representing a period of time before contemporary estimates for Neolithic habitation in Europe — where other archaeologists would not have expected further finds — she unearthed a great number of artefacts of daily life and of religious cults, which she researched and documented throughout her career.
Gimbutas gained unexpected fame — and notoriety — with her last three books: ''The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe'' (1974); ''The Language of the Goddess'' (1989), which inspired an exhibition in Wiesbaden, 1993/94; and her final book, ''The Civilization of the Goddess'' (1991), which presented an overview of her speculations about Neolithic cultures across Europe: housing patterns, social structure, art, religion and the nature of literacy.
''The Civilization of the Goddess'' articulated what Gimbutas saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess-centered and matristic ("gynocentric" or "gylanic"), and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal ("androcratic") culture which supplanted it. According to her interpretations, gynocentric / gylanic societies were peaceful, they honored homosexuals, and they espoused economic equality. The "androcratic", or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the other hand, invaded Europe and imposed upon its natives the hierarchical rule of warrior males.
Gimbutas' books and papers are housed, along with those of her colleague, mythologist Joseph Campbell, at the Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library on the campus of the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, California.

Assessment

Joseph Campbell and Ashley Montagu^[1] each compared the importance of Marija Gimbutas' output to the historical importance of the Rosetta Stone in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Campbell provided a foreword to a new edition of Gimbutas' ''The Language of the Goddess'' (1989) before he died, and often said how profoundly he regretted that her research on the Neolithic cultures of Europe had not been available when he was writing ''The Masks of God''.
Joan Marler, Gimbutas' personal editor[2] and founder of the Institute of Archaeomythology, wrote:

Although it is considered improper in mainstream archaeology to interpret the ideology of prehistoric societies, it became obvious to Marija that every aspect of Old European life expressed a sophisticated religious symbolism. She, therefore, devoted herself to an exhaustive study of Neolithic images and symbols to discover their social and mythological significance. To accomplish this it was necessary to widen the scope of descriptive archaeology to include linguistics, mythology, comparative religions and the study of historical records. She called this interdisciplinary approach "archaeomythology".^[2]

Criticism

Bernard Wailes, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Peter Steinfels in 1990 that she was "immensely knowledgable but not very good in critical analysis... She amasses all the data and then leaps to conclusions without any intervening argument... Most of us tend to say, oh my God, here goes Marija again". Other detractors quoted in that piece include Ruth Tringham, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Linda Ellis.
David Anthony, professor of anthropology at Hartwick College, denied that there was any evidence for a matriarchal society prior to the Kurgan incursion, and pointed out that Europe had hillforts and weapons, and presumably warfare, long before the Kurgan.^[3]
Andrew Fleming, "The Myth of the Mother Goddess," (''World Archaeology'' 1969)^[4] denied that Neolithic spirals, circles, and dots were symbols for eyes; that eyes, faces, and genderless figures were symbols of a female; or that certain of Gimbutas' female figures were symbols of a goddess or goddesses. Critics also point to grave goods as characterizing more familiar Neolithic gender roles, for which they allege Gimbutas did not account, and question her emphasis on female figures when many male or asexual figures have also been found. Peter Ucko^[5] speculated that Gimbutas's alleged fertility figures were nothing more than Neolithic dolls.
Gimbutas' attempts at deciphering Neolithic signs as ideograms, in ''The Language of the Goddess'' (1989), received the stiffest scholarly resistance of all her speculations.

Influence on Neo-Pagan movement

Gimbutas's theories have been extended and embraced by a number of authors in the Neopagan movement, although her conclusions are considered speculative by many. Gimbutas did identify the diverse and complex Paleolithic and Neolithic female representations she recognized as depicting a single universal Great Goddess, but also manifesting as a range of female deities: snake goddess, bee goddess, bird goddess, mountain goddess, Mistress of the Animals, etc., which were not necessarily ubiquitous throughout Europe.
In a tape entitled "The Age of the Great Goddess," she discusses the various manifestations of the Goddess which occur, and stresses the ultimate unity behind them all of the Earth as feminine.
In 2004, filmmaker Donna Read and Neopagan author and activist Starhawk released a collaborative documentary film about the life and work of Gimbutas, ''Signs Out of Time''.

See also

★ Kurgan hypothesis

★ Alexander Häusler, a critic of Gimbutas' "Kurgan culture"

★ Colin Renfrew, suggesting alternatives to the "Kurgan culture".

★ J. P. Mallory and the Yamna culture

References

1. "According to anthropologist Ashley Montagu, "Marija Gimbutas has given us a veritable Rosetta Stone of the greatest heuristic value for future work in the hermeneutics of archaeology and anthropology." [1]
2. "Marija Gimbutas - Life and Work", Joan Marler, January 1995
3. Idyllic Theory of Goddess Creates Storm
4. Fleming 1969
5. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/profiles/ucko.htm

Sources

★ John Chapman 1998. "The impact of modern invasions and migrations on archaeological explanation. A biographical sketch of Marija Gimbutas." In M. Díaz-Andreu/M.-L. Stig Sørensen (eds.), ''Excavating Women'' (London:Unwin) pp 295-314.

★ A. Häusler 1995. "Über Archäologie und den Ursprung der Indogermanen." In M. Kuna/N. Venclová (eds), ''Whither archaeology? Papers in honour of Evzen Neustupny'' (Prague, Akademie) pp 211-229.

★ Lynn Meskell 1995, "Goddesses, Gimbutas and 'New Age' Archaeology", ''Antiquity'' '69':74-86.

Works

★ Gimbutas, Marija 1946. ''Die Bestattung in Litauen in der vorgeschichtlichen Zeit.'' Tübingen: In Kommission bei J.C.B. Mohr.

★ Gimbutas, Marija: ''Ancient symbolism in Lithuanian folk art.'' Philadelphia: American Folklore Society , 1958. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 49.

★ Gimbutas, Marija ,1961. "Notes on the chronology and expansion of the Pit-grave culture", in J. Bohm & S. J. De Laet (eds), ''L’Europe à la fin de 1’Age de la pierre'': 193-200. Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

★ Gimbutas, Marija 1963. ''The Balts''. London : Thames and Hudson, Ancient peoples and places 33.

★ Gimbutas, Marija 1965. ''Bronze Age cultures in Central and Eastern Europe''. The Hague/London: Mouton.

★ Colin Renfrew, Marija Gimbutas and Ernestine S. Elster 1986. ''Excavations at Sitagroi, a prehistoric village in northeast Greece.'' Vol. 1. Los Angeles : Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 1986, Monumenta archaeologica 13.

★ Marija Gimbutienė 1985. ''Baltai priešistoriniais laikais : etnogenezė, materialinė kultūra ir mitologija.'' Vilnius: Mokslas.

★ Gimbutas, Marija 1974. ''The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe''

★ Marija Gimbutas (ed.) 1976. ''Neolithic Macedonia as reflected by excavation at Anza, southeast Yugoslavia''. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 1976. Monumenta archaeologica 1.

★ Marija Gimbutas 1977. "The first wave of Eurasian steppe pastoralists into Copper Age Europe", ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' 5: 277-338.

★ Marija Gimbutas 1980. "The Kurgan wave #2 (c.3400-3200 BC) into Europe and the following transformation of culture", ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' 8: 273-315.

★ Marija Gimbutas 1989. ''The Language of the Goddess''.

★ Marija Gimbutas, Shan Winn, Daniel Shimabuku, 1989. "Achilleion: a Neolithic settlement in Thessaly, Greece, 6400-5600 B.C." Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles. ''Monumenta archaeologica'' 14.

★ Marija Gimbutas 1991. ''The Civilization of the Goddess''

★ Gimbutas, Marija 1992. ''Die Ethnogenese der europäischen Indogermanen''. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft , Vorträge und kleinere Schriften 54.

★ Dexter, Miriam Robbins and Karlene Jones-Bley 1997 (eds), ''The Kurgan culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe''. Selected articles from 1952 to 1993 by M. Gimbutas. Journal of Indo-European Studies monograph 18, Washington DC: Institute for the Study of Man.

★ Gimbutas, Marija, edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter, 1999 ''The Living Goddesses''. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

★ Dexter, Miriam Robbins and Edgar C. Polomé, eds. 1997, "Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas." Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph #19. Washington, DC: The Institute for the Study of Man.

External links

★ Marija Gimbutas' "The Balts" e-book

★ Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library

★ Gimbutas biography, by her co-worker Joan Marler

★ "Learning the language of the Goddess" a 1992 interview with Gimbutas

★ ''Signs Out of Time'' documentary on the life of the late archaeologist Marija Gimbutas

★ Kristina Berggren and James B. Harrod, "Understanding Marija Gimbutas": a response to criticism

★ Debunking Gimbutas' Mother Goddess theories: Peter Ucko's and Andrew Fleming's counterstances; claims to debunk the 1989 documentary-format film part of a programme of "women's spirituality."