Marija GIMBUTAS: Fiction and Source
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images, Marija Gimbutas, 2nd edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
The Living Goddess, Marija Gimbutas, Edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter , Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Dorothy Nissen, Editor of ARTBEAT, 2009.
Newsletter for Northern California Women's Caucus for the Arts
An interesting aspect of Marija Gimbutas’s stupendous accomplishment in research on Neolithic artefacts in Europe is that many students of archeology believe her central hypothesis of a single “Kurgan” presence in Neolithic Europe to be wrong. “Kurgan” is her name for a people from the east (with a common style of grave) whom she believed were comprised of a single tribe that brought the idea of war and aggression to the peaceful indigenous people of Europe 6500 years ago. Nonetheless the 2007 edition of Gimbutas’s work The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images, originally published in 1982, and The Living Goddess, which was close to completion when the author died in 1994, both continue to affirm that a Neolithic village people lived peacefully in southeastern Europe before the incursion of patriarchal groups from further east.
Evidence reveals however that a male fertility god (e.g. Freya’s brother Frey) was worshipped in parallel to the goddess in these cultures. While Neolithic Europeans may have shared common language roots, controversy still rages as to whether they were primarily matristic (goddess-oriented and matrilineal) as Gimbutas believed. Gimbutas described the main horn image at Çatalhöyük in Turkey (which is similar to other images throughout Neolithic Europe) as based on the fallopian tubes in female anatomy. This seems far-fetched to some since the bull goddess, a common and archetypal image, is a more likely source for the image at Çatalhöyük.
Some scholars resolve this issue by noting that in some instances hornlike forms were drawn on top of outlines of the female body in the area of the fallopian tubes. A compelling aspect of these interpretations is the idea that art often makes reference to the human experience of interiority — perhaps specifically to the feminine interior — as the cave of gestation.
According to Elinor Gadon (Once and Future Goddess), the idea that bodily reference informs sacred architecture may hold up in general if not in this specific case, since the architecture of many sites seems to mirror human anatomy. Consider that the longitudinal dimension and the cross shape of the floorplan of western Romanesque Christian churches call up for some the image of the body and the human journey of Christ. This experience is reflected as well in the mandalic da Vinci diagram. The labyrinths discovered beneath the foundations of many medieval Christian churches can be seen to echo some form in the interior body. Note the early series by photographer Linda Conner in which she juxtaposes examples of ritual scarification and other human scars with sacred sites. Consider as well Lucy Lippard’s important Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (1995), which examines art from the 70s and later decades (e.g., the “Spiral Jetty” of Robert Smithson and art of early feminists) that explores a deeply felt link to the physicality of Neoloithic art, while making an entirely contemporary and now more urgent plea for awareness of our physical connection with Earth and its seasons.
Gimbutas’s commitment to the idea that humans can live peacefully and that aggression and war are not intrinsic to human nature is a great contribution. Despite the controversy surrounding her work, Gimbutas’s beautifully designed and copiously illustrated books remain a source of information and inspiration for artists interested in examining the link between between attitudes toward the body, ways of perceiving the feminine, and attitudes toward the earth.
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images, Marija Gimbutas, 2nd edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
The Living Goddess, Marija Gimbutas, Edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter , Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Dorothy Nissen, Editor of ARTBEAT, 2009.
Newsletter for Northern California Women's Caucus for the Arts
An interesting aspect of Marija Gimbutas’s stupendous accomplishment in research on Neolithic artefacts in Europe is that many students of archeology believe her central hypothesis of a single “Kurgan” presence in Neolithic Europe to be wrong. “Kurgan” is her name for a people from the east (with a common style of grave) whom she believed were comprised of a single tribe that brought the idea of war and aggression to the peaceful indigenous people of Europe 6500 years ago. Nonetheless the 2007 edition of Gimbutas’s work The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images, originally published in 1982, and The Living Goddess, which was close to completion when the author died in 1994, both continue to affirm that a Neolithic village people lived peacefully in southeastern Europe before the incursion of patriarchal groups from further east.
Evidence reveals however that a male fertility god (e.g. Freya’s brother Frey) was worshipped in parallel to the goddess in these cultures. While Neolithic Europeans may have shared common language roots, controversy still rages as to whether they were primarily matristic (goddess-oriented and matrilineal) as Gimbutas believed. Gimbutas described the main horn image at Çatalhöyük in Turkey (which is similar to other images throughout Neolithic Europe) as based on the fallopian tubes in female anatomy. This seems far-fetched to some since the bull goddess, a common and archetypal image, is a more likely source for the image at Çatalhöyük.
Some scholars resolve this issue by noting that in some instances hornlike forms were drawn on top of outlines of the female body in the area of the fallopian tubes. A compelling aspect of these interpretations is the idea that art often makes reference to the human experience of interiority — perhaps specifically to the feminine interior — as the cave of gestation.
According to Elinor Gadon (Once and Future Goddess), the idea that bodily reference informs sacred architecture may hold up in general if not in this specific case, since the architecture of many sites seems to mirror human anatomy. Consider that the longitudinal dimension and the cross shape of the floorplan of western Romanesque Christian churches call up for some the image of the body and the human journey of Christ. This experience is reflected as well in the mandalic da Vinci diagram. The labyrinths discovered beneath the foundations of many medieval Christian churches can be seen to echo some form in the interior body. Note the early series by photographer Linda Conner in which she juxtaposes examples of ritual scarification and other human scars with sacred sites. Consider as well Lucy Lippard’s important Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (1995), which examines art from the 70s and later decades (e.g., the “Spiral Jetty” of Robert Smithson and art of early feminists) that explores a deeply felt link to the physicality of Neoloithic art, while making an entirely contemporary and now more urgent plea for awareness of our physical connection with Earth and its seasons.
Gimbutas’s commitment to the idea that humans can live peacefully and that aggression and war are not intrinsic to human nature is a great contribution. Despite the controversy surrounding her work, Gimbutas’s beautifully designed and copiously illustrated books remain a source of information and inspiration for artists interested in examining the link between between attitudes toward the body, ways of perceiving the feminine, and attitudes toward the earth.
