The Living Goddesses

Rating:
Summary: Not really a paradise
Review: First of all, Gimbutas was an eminent scholar, not a "fringe archaeologist". The fact that most archaeologists reject her theories does not prove that she was wrong. In fact, most, if not all, of her opponents has never seriously tried to explain why upper Palaeolithic and early neolithic symbolism is focused on women, while the latest neolithic and bronze symbolism clearly is cantered on men. No one of them ever had a good explanation for this fact - so why so harshly attacking Gimbutas who at least had a plausible theory?

In this book, published five years after Gimbutas death, the reader will get a good picture of Gimbutas theory of the goddess cult who, according to her, was the ideology of a matrifocal and matrilineal society. She is probably right in her main theory - at least none of her critics have a better alternative.

But... there is a contradiction between her tendency to idealize these societies and some known facts about some of them, facts that even Gimbutas acknowledge in this book. For example at page 106 the reader is informed that at the centre of the ritual circle Woodhenge, which Gimbutas sees a sacred place for the Goddess, "the archaeologists uncovered the crouched skeleton of a tree-year old child" . On the next page she argues that all the British "roundels" were sacred places for the Goddess and mentions "the sacrificial or ritual nature of their human remains". In fact , many of these human remains comes from small children, probably sacrificed when the circles where built.

Gimbutas was an eminent scholar, but when it comes to idealizing, it appears to have been a snake in the matrifocal paradise, at least in some regions, after all. If I have to choose, I prefer the Virgin of Guadalupe before the goddess of Woodhenge.

Rating:
Summary: Old European culture has survived in its living goddesses.
Review: For those familiar with Gimbutas's earlier works, Part I is a refresher course on how the peoples of Neolithic Europe saw the Goddess. Especially interesting are the chapters on Stonehenge and other temples and ceremonial centers of wood stone and wood throughout Britain and the continent. The book's greatest value, however, lies in Part II, which comprises chapters on the Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Basque, Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic religions. Gimbutas and Dexter explain with precision and clarity how the civilization of early historical Europe was an amalgam containing both Old and Indo-European elements. The Old Europeans were already there, of course, working the land, building cities, creating their elegant pottery, worshipping in temples sometimes miscalled palaces or fortified settlements. The Indo-European tribes came and saw and conquered. And then they settled in. Yes, they made terrible changes, but they also intermarried and adopted, and life went on. Much remained and was transformed. Although we are, for example, perhaps most familiar with the Greek gods and goddesses, we may not be familiar with their Old European ancestors. Hekate, Artemis, Athena, and Hera survived from Old Europe. So did some of the Greek gods, including Hermes, Pan, and (amazingly) Zeus. The information on the Balts is especially interesting, for they were the last pagans in Europe and their region "represents the greatest repository of Old European beliefs and traditions." This is the paganism Marija Gimbutas experienced as a child in Lithuania. Some who espouse the "culture wars" would have us believe that Gimbutas made it all up. This book is proof that she simply reported what she found. It is a testament to her extraordinary scholarship in archaeology, folklore, history, and matrilineal culture.

Rating:
Summary: The Kirkus reviewer obviously did not read the book!
Review: The evidence laid out in this series of works is very compelling. The critics of these ideas seem only able to express themselves with "Preposterous!" or "Idiotic" but never with a calm rational comparison of data and artifacts.

The Kirkus reviewer says it is "bordering on the ridiculous" to assume that the bull could have been a female symbol, that this is Gimbutas' imagination. But then there is artwork remaining from this era with clear pictures of bull skulls with horns drawn over the pelvic areas of women, with the horns positioned where the fallopian tubes would be. This murals are reproduced in the book. Had the reviewer wanted to actually check what the book presented as evidence for this assertion, he or she would have been able to find this mural. Bull skulls painted over the pelvises of women, the symbolism is hard to dismiss.

The critics of Gimbutas either don't read her work or address people who have never read her work themselves.

Seeing the anger and spite towards this body of scholarly work leaves me wondering why is there so much hatred and antagonism towards the work of Gimbutas? Why are there so many irrational and inaccurate criticisms of her body of work?

The Kirkus reviewer was sloppy -- if he or she had bothered to read the book being reviewed, then he or she would have had access to the data that supports Gimbutas' assignment of the bucranium, the head and horns of ther bull, as a uterine symbol.

What kind of fly-by-night operation is Kirkus that they allow such sloppy reviews by someone who will make an attack on a position presented in the book without actually looking at the physical evidence for this position that is decribed and presented and footnoted properly in the book itself?

I am not impressed by the critic of Gimbutas. I haven't seen a criticism that was either accurate or unemotional.