Editing Marija Gimbutas (section)

==Reception==

[[File:Gimbutas.jpg|thumb|Marija Gimbutienė commemorative plaque in [[Kaunas]], Mickiewicz Street]]
[[File:Marija Gimbutas 2021 stamp of Lithuania.jpg|thumb|Marija Gimbutienė on a 2021 stamp of Lithuania]]

[[Joseph Campbell]] and [[Ashley Montagu]]<ref>"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." {{cite web|url=http://www.online.pacifica.edu/cgl/Gimbutasbio |title=Pacifica Graduate Institute &#124; Campbell & Gimbutas Library &#124; Marija Gimbutas - Life and Work |access-date=2004-02-19 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040204135051/http://www.online.pacifica.edu/cgl/Gimbutasbio |archive-date=2004-02-04 }}</ref><ref name="Steinfels90">[[Peter Steinfels]] (1990) ''[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1DD1631F930A25751C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Idyllic Theory Of Goddesses Creates Storm]''. NY Times, February 13, 1990</ref> each compared the importance of Gimbutas's output to the historical importance of the [[Rosetta Stone]] in deciphering [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]]. Campbell provided a foreword to a new edition of Gimbutas's ''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]]''. The [[ecofeminist]] [[Charlene Spretnak]] argued in 2011 that a "backlash" against Gimbutas's work had been orchestrated, starting in the last years of her life and following her death.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.archaeomythology.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Spretnak-Journal-7.pdf|author=C. Spretnak |year=2011|title=Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas|journal=Journal of Archaeomythology|volume= 7|pages= 1–27 |issn=2162-6871}}</ref>

Mainstream archaeology dismissed Gimbutas's later works.<ref>Paul Kiparsky, "[https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/handbook.pdf New perspectives in historical linguistics]", [https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/ To appear in Claire Bowern (ed.)Handbook of Historical Linguistics.]</ref> Anthropologist Bernard Wailes (1934–2012) of the [[University of Pennsylvania]] commented to ''The New York Times'' that most of Gimbutas's peers<ref>The New York Times book of science literacy: what everyone needs to know from Newton to the knuckleball, page 85, Richard Flaste, 1992</ref> believe her to be "immensely knowledgeable but not very good in critical analysis. ... She amasses all the data and then leaps from it to conclusions without any intervening argument." He said that most archaeologists consider her to be an eccentric.<ref name="Steinfels90"/>

[[David W. Anthony]] has praised Gimbutas's insights regarding the Indo-European Urheimat, but also disputed Gimbutas's assertion that there was a widespread peaceful society before the Kurgan incursion, noting that Europe had hillforts and weapons, and presumably warfare, long before the Kurgan.<ref name="Steinfels90"/> A standard textbook of European prehistory corroborates this point, stating that warfare existed in neolithic Europe and that adult males were given preferential treatment in burial rites.<ref>S. Milisauskas, ''European prehistory'' (Springer, 2002), p.82, 386, etc. See also Colin Renfrew, ed., ''The Megalithic Monuments of Western Europe: the latest evidence'' (London : Thames and Hudson, 1983).</ref>

[[Peter Ucko]] and Andrew Fleming were two early critics of the "Goddess" theory, with which Gimbutas later came to be associated. Ucko, in his 1968 monograph ''Anthropomorphic figurines of predynastic Egypt'' warned against unwarranted inferences about the meanings of statues. He notes, for example, that early Egyptian figurines of women holding their breasts had been taken as "obviously" significant of maternity or fertility, but the [[Pyramid Texts]] revealed that in [[Ancient Egypt|Egypt]] this was the female gesture of grief.<ref>P. Ucko, ''Anthropomorphic figurines of predynastic Egypt and neolithic Crete with comparative material from the prehistoric Near East and mainland Greece'' (London, A. Szmidla, 1968).</ref>

Fleming, in his 1969 paper "The Myth of the Mother Goddess", questioned the practice of identifying neolithic figures as female when they weren't clearly distinguished as male and took issue with other aspects of the "Goddess" interpretation of Neolithic stone carvings and burial practices.<ref>A. Fleming (1969), [http://stevewatson.info/readings/ancient_interests/Fleming-Mother_Goddess.pdf "The Myth of the Mother Goddess"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160531011257/http://stevewatson.info/readings/ancient_interests/Fleming-Mother_Goddess.pdf |date=2016-05-31 }}, ''World Archaeology'' 1(2), 247–261.</ref> Cynthia Eller also discusses the place of Gimbutas in injecting the idea into [[feminism]] in her 2000 book ''[[The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory]]''.

The 2009 book ''Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism'' by Cathy Gere examines the political influence on archaeology more generally. Through the example of [[Knossos]] on the island of [[Crete]], which had been represented as the paradigm of a pacifist, matriarchal and sexually free society, Gere claims that archaeology can easily slip into reflecting what people want to see, rather than teaching people about an unfamiliar past.<ref>Cathy Gere (2009), ''Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism'', University of Chicago Press, pp. 4–16ff.</ref><ref>See also Charlotte Allen, [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/01/the-scholars-and-the-goddess/5910/ "The Scholars and the Goddess."], ''The Atlantic Monthly'', January 1, 2001.</ref>