From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Critique of Gimbutas "Idyllic Goddess" Claims
Organization: LLNL
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 22:42:25 GMT

	[I don't have Gimbutas's books with me at the moment, and a
lot of the comments Sheaffer had quoted are too non-specific for me to
examine in detail...]

In article <1993Jan7.011122.27059@netcom.com> sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:

>             David  Anthony,  an assistant professor of  anthropology  at
>        Hartwick  College in Oneonta, N.Y., whose area of  research  also
>        coincide  closely with Dr. Gimbutas's, said that contrary to  her
>        claims,  the  cultures of Old Europe built fortified  sites  that
>        indicate  the  presence  of warfare. There is  also  evidence  of
>        weapons,  including some used as symbols of status, and of  human
>        sacrifice, hierarchy, and social inequality ...

	This is one of my reasons for the "vagueness" complaint.
Exactly _what_ is he referring to???

	Gimbutas would acknowledge every bit of the "evidence", which
she discusses in her work, but she attributes _that_ to the early
Kurgans.

	[On a house Gimbutas considered a temple, that was only
slightly larger than the rest]

"In my opinion, it's no more a  temple than I am a monkey," McPherron says.

	Again, I'd like to know the full story. Were there some fine
artifacts in it?

>         - from "The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles"
>           by Ronald Hutton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) - p. 37-42

>             "By the 1950s, prehistorians had achieved agreement upon the
>        question  of  their  origins  [European  megaliths].  They   were
>        described  as  being the result of an idea brought up  from  more
>        advanced Mediterranean civilizations, together with the cult of a
>        Great  Goddess or Earth Mother. Both parts of this  concept  were
>        shattered  at the end of the 1960s, the notion of the Goddess  in
>        circumstances which will be described later, and the belief in  a
>        Mediterranean origin by the discovery of faults in the Carbon  14
>        dating process...    [p. 19]

	[On the rejection of it...]

	The radiocarbon dates would suggest only that the European
megalithic tombs were a tradition that developed _independently_ of
Mediterranean architectural traditions like those of Malta and Crete,
though they might be derived from some ancestral Neolithic beliefs.
Gimbutas herself is well aware of the radiocarbon evidence.

	A "universal" Goddess? My only point of agreement is that this
is perhaps unwarranted syncretism.

	HOWEVER, Earth Goddess worship appears pretty widespread in
Europe, if we are to judge from the first written accounts in
historical times. Did Earth-Goddess worship pop up in various places
just in time to be written about??? Although if it is older than
written records, which it certainly is, there is certainly the
legitimate question of how far back it goes.

	So I do think the hypothesis that these tombs represented the
wombs of some Earth Goddess(es) is certainly a reasonable one.

	...One
>        was  Peter Ucko, in his monograph _Anthropomorphic  Figurines  of
>        Predynastic  Egypt  and  Neolithic  Crete_  ....  Professor  Ucko
>        reminded  readers  that a large minority of  Neolithic  figurines
>        were  male  or asexual, that few if any statuettes had  signs  of
>        majesty  or  supernatural  power,  and  that  few  of  them   had
>        accentuated sexual characteristics (the 'pubic triangles' on many
>        of   them   could  be  loincloths).

	Loincloths? He sounds like his imagination has gone on
overdrive. Loincloths need belts, and where are the belts? And if
there is a cloth over the front, where is it in back?

	And how does he diagnose "signs of majesty [and] supernatural
power"?

	... all over the globe clay models very similar  to
>        those  of the Neolithic are made as children's dolls. Just as  in
>        the  modern West, most are intended for girls and are  themselves
>        female.

	That may well be so, but it would be important to see pictures
of such clay dolls. A lot of the Neolithic statuettes discussed by
Gimbutas look like very fine artistic work, which is _not_ something
that one would give to a little kid to play with. Unless children's
behavior has changed drastically over the last several thousand years.

	...Another widespread use of such figures is in  sympathetic
>        magic

	So what? That doesn't explain away the fancy artistry of some
of them. And one should not draw a fine line between sympathetic magic
and religious ritual -- look at a lot of pagan/animist religions, and
consider what even some Catholics do to statues of saints :-)

	...  there  was  absolutely  no  need  to  interpret  them
>        everywhere as the same female or male deity.

	The only thing I will concede is that the syncretism is
perhaps unwarranted.

	I also note that Gimbutas does not interpret _all_ of them as
deities; some of them look very much like fancily dressed people,
probably participants in rituals, an interpretation she supports.


	[Spirals, circles, genderless figures != Mother-Goddess
symbols]

	Maybe. But Gimbutas has her answer to that in her books; she
proposes that spirals are symbols of regeneration or something.

>             Ian Hodder ... notes that women  were  buried
>        with  ornaments and cosmetic boxes,

	Ornaments, probably. Cosmetic boxes? How does one tell when a
little box is a cosmetic box? He violates his own caveats here.

	... men with weapons of  war  and

	Spears and daggers can be used for both, and they could have
been used mostly for hunting and only occasionally for fighting off
raiders.

>        hunting and implements of agriculture; that women were  portrayed
>        far  more  often in the figurines, usually nude, while  men  were
>        portrayed  most often in the wall-paintings, clothed and  usually
>        engaged in hunting; that the art placed a great emphasis on  wild
>        nature  and little upon agriculture or domestic tasks;  and  that
>        the  living spaces around the hearths and the  cooking-pots  were
>        never decorated like the rest of the hearth...

	Scenes of hunting, yes. War, no.

	One doesn't see any scenes of military triumph, as far as I am aware.

	So it is still reasonable to conclude that warfare was rare;
those hunting scenes would suggest the principal uses of those weapons.

	[On the Kurgans: Mallory presenting some criticisms of the
Kurgan-invasion hypothesis and Milisauskas stating that "...the
migration hypothesis  should be treated with caution."]

	These are certainly legitimate points, but they do not
constitute a refutation of the Kurgan-invasion hypothesis.

	I think that retrieving DNA fragments from bones will provide
the ultimate tests of such hypotheses.

>          -  from  a review by Ruby Rohrlich in "The  Women's  Review
>             of Books" (Vol. VII, No. 9, June, 1990)

>             The  reknowned archaeologist Leonard Woolley has shown  that
>        in  Sumer, the first civilization in the Old World, the  earliest
>        dynastic  rulers  practiced  human sacrifice.  Others  have  made
>        similar  findings. Gimbutas seems to accept human sacrifice as  a
>        corroboration,  not a refutation, of hr thesis; she  argues  that
>        such sacrifice strengthens the life-force by conveying the energy
>        of the victim to the sacrificer...

	Where does Gimbutas state that??? She does not seem to state
that human sacrifice was very common, and in the _Civilization of the
Goddess_, she seems to prefer the theory that the seeming human
sacrifice was a secondary-burial ritual where the flesh was cleaned
off the bones, which in various forms, is actually a rather widespread
custom (the cycle of life and death isn't complete until the flesh is
gone, Gimbutas proposes). There may be causes of "true" human
sacrifice, but that was probably rare (there is only one Minoan case
that cannot be plausibly ascribed to a defleshing ritual, as some
Minoan cases of dismembered children's bones can be).

	Although human sacrifice is certainly not many people's idea
of an appetizing practice, it is worth noting that the sacrifices in
the Sumerian kings' tombs were very closely analogous to the Kurgan
human sacrifices, the later Scythian ones, and even some early Chinese
ones: these are companions for the King who will go with him.

>             Gimbutas proposes a single, simplistic theory - invasion  by
>        violent, patriarchal Indo-Europeans - to account for the  changes
>        that radically transformed human society in this period...

	I agree that it certainly does look simplistic.

>             Despite  its  theoretical weaknesses, _The Language  of  the
>        Goddess_  is a book to cherish for its spectacular  reproductions
>        alone ... If nothing else, Gimbutas' herculean labors have  borne
>        fruit  in  a  magnificent  collection of the  art  of  our  early
>        ancestors, a treasure trove for anthropologists, art  historians,
>        teachers, and students.

>             [RS  note:  Rohrlich  is a feminist scholar  who  makes  the
>             highly-dubious  claim that ancient Crete was a  "matriarchy"
>             (in   _Becoming  Visible  -  Women  in  European   History_,
>             Bridenthal  & Koonz, eds., Houghton Mifflin,  1977,  chapter
>             2)]

	I'm surprised that Scepticus Maximus did not try to skewer
Ruby Rohrlich's claims...

>             Question: How can you tell if you've gone too far in drawing
>        conclusions?
>             Gimbutas:  Well,  this  has to do with  your  intuition  and
>        experience. Just like an art creation you must feel that you  are
>        right in what you are saying.

	I agree that that sounds like the judge who said of hard-core
pornography that "I know it when I see it".

>        Conclusion:

	[Claim that Gimbutas's views are universally rejected...]

	That is not the case. I think that there is partial agreement
with her on at least some of what she has to say; on sci.archaeology,
I once asked some opinions of her work _The Language of the Goddess_,
and I got a response from someone who had shown the book to several
prehistorians, who broadly agreed despite some nits to pick, but who
did not want to be quoted on this subject.

	About a year ago, I myself actually wrote to Gimbutas
detailing some of my critiques (what would the rainbow-colored apple
on Apple personal computers be interpreted as, for example), but I got
a response that she found my comments very interesting but that she
was too sick to respond in detail.
-- 
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/lip@s1.gov