Introduction
di Luciana Percovich
It will take more than thirty years for my theses to be recognized, Marija Gimbutas repeated a few years before her death. Aware of the scope of his vision and of his being foreign – not only geographically but culturally in a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) world, which he had known from within one of the strongholds (Harvard) of the undisputed patriarchal power to “establish the agenda” and decide what counts and what doesn't, what you can talk about and what you can't, whether you have access to the funds to do it or not.
She belonged to a generation of trailblazing women, such as Mary Daly, Barbara McClintock, Evelyn Fox Keller and many others, illustrious or not, who found themselves - in their case - at high and prestigious academic levels in an extraordinary moment in history, in in which cracks opened towards demonized and removed abysses into which other visions had guided humanity and were pressing to return to inspire it. Far-sighted visions that today we are perhaps once again able to recognize with gratitude.
As a site born from the desire to continue her research by applying her multidisciplinary method, 30 years after 1994 we choose to re-talk about her "beloved teacher of thought and practice" through the two different approaches that follow.
Ernestine Elster, also an archaeologist, was close to her for study, professional and elective reasons like perhaps no other, if we exclude family members. “I participated in all of her excavations; we spent a lot of time together, we traveled together, we laughed, broke bread and drank wine, worked like hell and we didn't always agree", so she writes in the essay that we have chosen as the most complete, despite its brevity, to introduce Marija even to those who approach her for the first time. “Marija Gimbutas. Setting the agenda” was published in the collective volume Archeology and Women. Ancient and Modern Issues in 2007. Ten years later, it was 2017, as a consequence of the unpredictable development of studies on ancient DNA, Colin Renfrew – one of the most famous archaeologists of the 900th century – recognized that MG was right!
In 2019 we published some passages of one communication by Joan Marler, official biographer of MG, in which she gave news of the changed attitude of Colin Renfrew, who had fought hard against thekurgan hypothesis. And that, as the author of Archeology. Theory, Methods, Practice, a textbook adopted in many universities around the world and also in Italy, omits Marija Gimbutas in the review of archaeologists of the 900th century - except to mention her several times in the text to disagree with her theories.
Marler recounts how at the opening of the conference at the University of Chicago, in that December 2017, entitled “Marija Gimbutas Memorial Lecture Series”, having taken note of the confirmations coming from the studies on the DNA of ancient populations begun in recent years, Renfrew announced that after all MG was right in linking the spread of the pastoral peoples of the steppes to the Indo-Europeanisation of Ancient Europe (which gradually meant the end of the millenary peaceful and matrix-centric culture and the beginning of the patriarchal era in Europe, not yet extinct) .
This article by Elster, which adds a privileged and partly unpublished observation point even for those who have known and read Marija for years, is followed by a photographic review of the conference that the Laima Association organized in May 2014 at the Casa Internazionale delle Donne of Rome (and of which there are Acts).
The photo gallery shows the different moments of the conference, the interventions from the speakers' table, the exhibition of the artists who are inspired by the Goddess, the performance in the large internal courtyard of the house commissioned and curated by Morena Luciani and Thuline Andreoli, the bookshop edited by Sarah Perini and Mirco Horvath, the precious and indispensable presence, skill and knowledge of the themes by the translators Valeria Trisoglio, Sara Ramadoro and Cristina Brolowsky, and in the background the smiling presence of Gen Vaughan.
20 years had passed since 1994, today they have become 30 and I believe that both to those who were there and to those who were not this "how we were" will communicate joy, passion and sense of the journey made and of the immense spaces still to be covered, from our roots to our Ancestors and Ancestors of the Future!

MARIJA GIMBUTAS. SETTING THE AGENDA
di Ernestine Sondheimer Elster
Marija Gimbutas was complicated, charismatic, controversial and the embodiment of vitality. By her death in 1994, she had directed or co-directed five excavations[1] in south-eastern Europe and published around 20 books and hundreds of articles and reviews. She is widely recognized as one of the most important and controversial figures in the study of gender and women in archaeology. Her research has played a key role in women's studies and feminist thought generally, and her ideas have had an impact far beyond the confines of academia. Furthermore, she is recognized as a pioneer in research into the prehistory of southeastern Europe.
My aim is to present Marija Gimbutas in historical perspective as an archaeologist active in the discipline in which she had undertaken research, challenged traditions and in turn been challenged. Although she has crossed disciplinary boundaries, my focus is on her role in archeology and the way in which she has influenced feminist thought; others will no doubt examine her contributions to mythology, folklore, and religion[2]. I struggle to be an impartial biographer; she was the director of my university studies, then we became colleagues at UCLA and remained friends until her death. I participated in all of her excavations; we spent a lot of time together, we traveled together, we laughed, broke bread and drank wine, worked like hell and we didn't always agree. I think of her as a warm and encouraging mentor, but also as a terrible adversary when her interpretations were questioned. It was not easy to discuss with her or raise doubts, especially regarding her "pantheon” of goddesses and prehistoric gods. For my doctorate, I purposely chose the technical study of chipped stone tools as my thesis topic, rather than some aspect of prehistoric religion, as I believe he expected. I realized she was disappointed, but a quantitative study of prehistoric technology was a goal I could pursue without conflict (Elster 1977).

This partial biography[3] by Marija Gimbutas was born from the study of her publications, from conversations with colleagues and scholars and their reviews, from my seminars and notes, from our chats and from the events of which I am aware and/or in which I had participated in the years between 1965 and 1994[4]. To follow her research, I tried to “bring to light” the different paths followed by Marija, some of which found a confluence in her last years.
A native of Lithuania, Marija focused her early research on Lithuanian and Baltic folklore and archaeology, but then turned to the broader question of the homeland, dispersal and archeology of speakers of Proto-Indo-European (referred to as *PIE), whom he designated as the Kurgan people.
Between 1967 and 1973 he began archaeological excavations at prehistoric sites in Yugoslavia and Greece and began writing about “Ancient Europe,” meaning Neolithic and Chalcolithic southeastern Europe, including Greece and the Balkans.[5]. He believed that the peoples inhabiting Ancient Europe were not *PIE in language or social structure, but that they had developed their own proto-writing and a matrifocal social structure, organized around a pantheon of very ancient goddesses and deities, depicted in ubiquitous miniature clay human figurines. Marija intuited that the changes observable in the archaeological evidence at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age of Ancient Europe (e.g. interruption of occupation, abandonment of a site, etc.) were caused by the 'incursions' of the PIE Kurgan people.
He believed that the meeting of these two traditions transformed Ancient Europe and led to its Indo-Europeanization. Different parts of this thesis have been applauded, others accepted with caution or harshly criticized in the archaeological community. Toward the end of her life, she called herself an archaeo-mythologist, having combined her knowledge of myths, folklore, and archeology in her research. These different threads that were the interests of her life were inextricably woven into a single fabric of charisma and controversy. Her final years were dedicated to writing, lecturing, and enjoying the popular recognition that had come her way through her publications on the Goddess, which had a notable impact on feminist research but also on popular culture.
THE TRAINING YEARS
When Marija Alseikaite was born in Vilnius on January 23, 1921, Lithuania had gained independence as part of the 1918 World War I armistice, which ended a century of tsarist oppression. However, part of the country, including Vilnius, was occupied by Poland. Lithuanian independence had always been threatened by its powerful neighbors: Prussia, Poland and White Russia.
Because of this (or perhaps despite this), there was an intensely nationalist spirit among Lithuanian intellectuals and professionals, and Marija's family actively participated in political, scientific and cultural life. Nationalism, hope of self-government and democratic promise were part of Marija's cultural heritage. In the following years, she constantly campaigned for the liberation of Lithuania from the Iron Curtain from the United States[6].
Marija Gimbutas' background is important, because she did not come to the United States as an oppressed immigrant eager to abandon her culture, but rather as a person proudly connected to her roots. She had grown up in an extended, privileged family. Her parents were doctors; Her mother and aunt had graduated with honors in Lithuania, the former in medicine/ophthalmology and the latter (her mother's sister) in dentistry, and both were for her models of female independence and achievement. Marija's parents, Veronica and Danielus, collected art (the family homes were lined with fabrics, paintings and sculptures); painters, sculptors, musicians, poets and writers were part of their circle[7]. The stories of Marija's youthful adventures describe a strong, smart, accomplished girl, trained not to be afraid of anything and to expect success on whatever path she chose. The snapshots reveal a cute, dimpled little girl with a bright, lively look. Her personal reflections suggest that she learned easily and was quite happy[8]. She loved dancing, horseback riding, skating, swimming, cycling and was attracted to music.

There were always country women to help around the house and on her grandparents' farms. Marija says she grew up on a diet of popular wisdom, spiced with a good dose of superstitions, myths, stories but especially with fallow deer, Lithuanian folk songs, which he adored.
Years later, Marija wrote the introduction to a collection of dainos in which she described how, as a student in 1940 at Vilnius University, she had made an ethnographic trip to south-eastern Lithuania to record the texts of dainos sung by an elderly woman who is believed to have had around 300 songs in her repertoire (Gimbutas 1964). These songs had been passed down orally from generation to generation, changing over time. The most repeated elements are the mythological images, peasant work, sowing, reaping and reflections on archaic and patriarchal family life, which she defined as the quintessence of Indo-European culture.
However, her “childhood” ended with her parents' separation in 1931. Her mother moved with Marija and her brother to Kaunas, the provisional capital of free Lithuania. The separation was painful. Five years later her father died; Marija told me that her loss was devastating and pushed her to decide her life's work. Much influenced by her father, she decided to study the history of her people[9]. Now fifteen years old and a high school student, she spoke Lithuanian, Polish and German and studied Russian. She was a skilled polyglot and this ability contributed to making her an authoritative voice in the world of archeology in subsequent years.[10].
At the age of 17, in 1938, Marija graduated from the Kaunas gymnasium and entered the University of Kaunas where she studied for two years, participating in excavations of prehistoric burials in the region. During this momentous time in Europe, 1938-39, Poland withdrew from Lithuania and for a short time Vilnius was a “liberated” city. Marija moved from Kaunas to Vilnius University[11].
Political events followed one another rapidly and with terrible effects. In 1940 Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union; Marija told me that she, her family members and many of her friends were involved in the opposition. There were marches, protests, arrests, deaths and disappearances. Then, in 1941, the advancing German army forced the Soviets to retreat. Amid this political confusion and terror, the University continued to function for a time. Between 1940 and 1942, the faculty offered Baltic archaeology, field work in archeology and ethnography, languages, folklore, mythology, ancient religion and historical linguistics (Butrimas 1997). Marija's interest in the Lithuanian language, one of the oldest Indo-European languages, was deepened with the study of historical linguistics. Considering her background, it is not surprising that she was drawn to ethnology and folklore. Among her first publications are articles on the folk customs of villagers in the Vilnius region. In at least two of her early monographs, Marija cites the publications of Jonas Balys, her professor of ethnology and folklore and by whom she was strongly influenced (Gimbutas 1958: 305; 1963a: 221).
There were no female professors, but there were other women studying archaeology[12]. On her path to professional life, her role models remained her mother and aunt, who had broken with tradition to go and study medicine in Switzerland. I have the impression that, in hindsight, Marija felt that the most significant obstacles to overcome as a novice professional were, firstly, the storm and turmoil of the Second World War and, secondly, being accepted as studious and treated as an equal in the male stronghold of Harvard University.
One of his early mentors was Professor Jonas Puzinas of Vilnius University. Upon his death, he wrote an appreciative memoir for a Chicago magazine (Gimbutas 1978). He had previously acknowledged his debt to the professor in an English monograph, “my first professor of archaeology, Dr. Jonas Puzinas of Vilnius University, Lithuania” (Gimbutas 1956b). The model of teaching prehistory was undoubtedly that of “cultural history,” with its emphasis on data, comparisons, propositions of influences, creation and comparison of chronologies, and essentialism.
As a student, she participated in cemetery excavations and wrote what appears to have been her first article on prehistoric Lithuania (Gimbutas 1942). This period must have been particularly intense. In 1941 she married Dr. Jurgis Gimbutas, who was a senior assistant in the faculty of technical subjects at Kaunas University. The following year, Marija graduated from Vilnius University with a thesis on Iron Age burial customs in Lithuania, based on her excavation experiences and further research. After graduation, she returned with her husband to Kaunas and continued to study Lithuanian prehistory, deepening and broadening her research under the gunfire of World War II. In June 1943 she was born a daughter, Danute. That year, Soviet troops invaded Lithuania again and the Germans retreated; by now invasion, occupation, retreat and then their repetition were a frightening and tragically familiar pattern of life in Lithuania. In 1944 she fled to the West with her husband and daughter[13]. They crossed Poland and Czechoslovakia and arrived in Vienna in mid-August, traveling by all kinds of means. In November, the unrest in Vienna increased, with air raids and food shortages. Marija's brother urged them to flee to Innsbruck, another harrowing journey. However, Lithuanians in Innsbruck gathered to toast Independence Day (1918) and to express hope that Lithuania would soon be free. The European conflagration ended that year, but Lithuania had to wait until 1990 for liberation from Soviet occupation!

With the end of the war in Europe, the Gimbutas family went back on the road. In their odyssey, they looked for free areas where there was food available. They went first to Württemberg, then to Urnau, near Ravensburg and, at the end of the summer of 1945, to Tübingen, then occupied by the French. Eventually they found accommodation in a nearby village, Pfullingen, also among the Lithuanians. Tübingen was one of the first universities to reopen after the war, and this must have been an attraction. (Kastner et al. 1988).
Marija matriculated in the fall of 1945, and Peter Goessler, an archaeologist whose research focused on southwestern Germany, became her supervisor. In the introduction to her thesis, Marija thanks him and writes that in Tübingen there were both prehistory and Baltic studies and that this had offered her the opportunity to continue her archaeological research[14]. When Marija talked about her studies in Germany, which wasn't often, she usually mentioned the excellence of the libraries. Personalities, faculty or fellow students were not named, at least in my presence[15]. As a mother and wife of a small household, and a doctoral student writing a thesis, she had little time to socialize. However, she attended classes in anthropology, history of religion, and archaeology. In March 1946 she defended her thesis on the prehistory of Lithuania and her dissertation was accepted (Gimbutas 1946). She continued her postdoctoral work in European archeology and ethnology in Tübingen and also attended the archaeological institutes of Heidelberg and Munich. Their second daughter, Zivile, was born in Tübingen in 1947; shortly thereafter, her husband obtained a scholarship to the International University of Munich, where they moved for a time. In 1949 their request to come to the United States was finally approved.

His early publications include sketches and articles on folklore (Gimbutas 1939; 1940a; 1940b). Between 1942 and 1944, short notes and longer articles followed on different aspects of prehistory in Lithuania: on beliefs, funeral rites and archaeological finds, and on the Balts. (Gimbutas 1943d; 1943e; 1944). Many works of this period were introduced by summaries in German. His arrival in the United States coincided with the appearance of an article (Gimbutas 1949) in which he set out his ideas on the link between Lithuania's past and present, an approach he would refine in his subsequent archaeological research in Europe south-eastern.
She was firmly convinced that the study of the history of popular culture, historical linguistics and mythology could provide a key to understanding material culture, that is, archeology and prehistoric religion. Marija's reasoning is explicit in her introduction to The Green Linden (green lime tree), (Gimbutas 1964). The author begins by describing the Lithuanian language as one of the most archaic living Indo-European languages, relating it to Sanskrit and Vedic hymns. According to her reading, while other languages of the Indo-European family have lost their archaic elements, these survived in Lithuanian because geographically the country was far from the crossroads of migration. The “historical destiny” that Marija writes about refers to the late arrival of Christianity, towards the end of the XNUMXth century. I quote:
…villagers retained the old religion for many more centuries. In the 16th century… the first catechisms appeared in Lithuanian; but even then, and almost until the 20th century, ancient beliefs and customs persisted. Folk religion slowly transformed into a 'dual faith', as Lithuanian folklore retained its pagan foundations and remained true to its deep prehistoric roots. Hence the numerous mythological elements present in dainos. In Europe, only Lithuanian and Latvian folklore can boast of an ancient living mythology with a number of names of pagan deities and other mythological images, comparable to pre-Olympian Greek, Roman, Vedic Indian, Persian and ancient Scandinavian ones… The mythological songs… represent the most ancient layer of the dainos… the image of the world…. Baltic mythology is Indo-European par excellence. The images of the gods reflect the ancient Indo-European social structure with its three fundamental classes: that of rulers, that of warriors and that of farmers. The mythological elements were transmitted from the peasant world, only the divine figures linked to the peasant mentality remained in folklore... the sun, the moon, "the thunderer"... (Gimbutas 1964:17). I made this long quote because I believe it was profoundly influenced by the spirit of dainos and from what she described as her Lithuanian heritage'parexcellence'. His ideas relating popular mythology, the ethnology of his people, comparative and historical linguistics, iconography, symbolism and archeology merged in his study of The Balts (Gimbutas 1963a). Subsequently, he applied this multifaceted approach to understanding the symbolism of figurines, markings on pottery, and in paintings or engravings on pottery from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in the Balkans and Greece. Only towards the end of his life, perhaps inspired by Joseph Campbell[16] and from the "goddess" groups he called this way of proceeding Archaeo-mythology.
THE HARVARD AND UCLA YEARS
The family (including Marija's mother-in-law, who was a botanist) arrived in the United States in March 1949, settling in Boston. Marija was 29 years old, with a degree from Tübingen, a published master's thesis, two dozen publications on Baltic and Lithuanian archaeology, folklore and mythology, and considerable relationships with Lithuanian, Austrian and Austrian scholars, libraries and archaeological research centres. Germans. Her husband, an engineer, began his career with few difficulties. Marija, however, worked in a series of menial jobs until she was ready to apply to Harvard.
Who were his colleagues? Harvard had tragically lost, to the war, James Harvey Gaul, a promising scholar who had conducted research on prehistoric Bulgaria (Gaul 1948); and previously, another Balkanist, Vladimir Fewkes (Fewkes 1934), had died prematurely in 1941. Both of these scholars had worked in the region that Marija would later call “Ancient Europe”. Scholars in residence included Hugh Hencken, president of the American School of Prehistoric Research, who was interested in British Isles, Etruscans, archeology and language (Hencken 1955), and Hallam Movius who researched the Upper Paleolithic of Western Europe . From what Marija said, he did a lot of translations for the benefit of both of them[17].
What was Harvard like for this young woman arriving there in the middle of the last century? I can only speculate. Marija described her experience as a kind of exploitation; others remember her as an energetic and demanding woman. She started from the bottom rung and slowly climbed, publication after publication. From the hints she made, I think she felt the snobbery of the Ivy League, especially as an immigrant with a foreign accent that was neither British nor French. Harvard in the mid-20th century was certainly the epitome of a male stronghold; women were welcomed into the Faculty Club only once a year, at Christmas. However, Marija was a determined and ambitious woman, a survivor of repressive foreign occupations of her homeland, who had crossed Europe during World War II as a displaced person, living with food shortages and air raids. And at the male-dominated Ivy League, she didn't feel treated or accepted as an equal, and while she rose to the challenge, the challenges persisted.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she carried out two excavations in Greece: the first time as co-director with Colin Renfrew and with a permit from the British School in Athens. However, when she planned the excavations at Achilleion, she was not interested in applying for a permit through the American School of Classical Studies in Athens[18] and chose instead to work collaboratively with the Superintendent, Dimitrios Theochares.
However, the Peabody Museum's American School of Prehistoric Research gave Marija theimprimatur from Harvard. By joining the Ivy League, he met many scholars, observed how the academy worked, and established a network of colleagues and friends – including the distinguished linguist Roman Jakobson[19]. Thus, in the middle of the last century, Marija Gimbutas continued her journey in a new country and in one of the most prestigious American universities. She remained at Harvard for nearly 15 years; her last child, Julie, was born in 1954. A few years after her arrival in the United States, she Marija published two articles in English, one in a Lithuanian-American magazine on Lithuanian folklore and the other on American Anthropologist (Gimbutas 1952). This last article was important, because it introduced his ideas on the archaeological identification of *PIE speakers to a wide Western academic audience. A revised and expanded article followed for the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (Gimbutas 1954), illustrating his work extensively with his characteristic arrow-filled maps.

In the early 1950s (and then in the 1960s), Marija published on Lithuanian prehistory, funerary rites, material culture, the amber trade, and other topics in the Lithuanian Encyclopedia and in other Lithuanian journals (see Vilnius University 1995; Gimbutas and Jankauskas 2005). Indeed, his output had parallel editorial paths, in Lithuanian and English, until the 80s, when his contributions in Lithuanian diminished in number. He first published his ideas in Lithuanian and then longer articles in English. Most of his contributions on folklore, art and myth first appeared in Lithuanian journals. Five years after her arrival in the United States, Marija Gimbutas' publishing career began to take on the contours of an international scholar, illustrated by this short list: Encyclopaedia Britannica (Gimbutas 1955a), Archeology (Gimbutas 1995b), Journal of World History of UNESCO (Gimbutas 1996a), book reviews for theAmerican Journal of Archaeology on the work of European archaeologists (Gimbutas l960a; 1962), Council for Old World Archeology Surveys and Bibliographies (Gimbutas and Ehrich l 9S7; l 9S9) and foreign journals (Gimbutas 1959; 1960b; 1960c).
During this intense period, he received grants from Bollingen (1953) and Wenner-Gren (1954), who supported his publication for the Peabody Museum, his first English-language monograph, Prehistory of Eastern Europe, Part I: Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age Cultures in Russia and the Baltic Area (1956b). The year of publication was important because he also participated in an international meeting, the “Fifth International Congress of Anthropology” which was held that year in Philadelphia (1-10 September). Its title, “Cultural change in Europe at the beginning of the second millennium BC: a contribution to the Indo-European problem”, launched his Kurgan hypothesis (kurgan, Russian word that defines a burial under a mound of earth). Marija's intense research activity at the Peabody, combined with study trips to Europe and the former USSR to examine materials and assemblages at museums and institutes, meet archaeologists, travel to sites and excavations, photograph artifacts, and participate in conferences, led to the publication of the monumental work Bronze Age Cultures in Central in Eastern Europe (Gimbutas 196Sa). While Prehistory had opened the way for her, Bronze Age Cultures consolidated his expectations for an absolutely excellent publishing career. Many of the most respected foundations and funding agencies provided support: the National Science Foundation (19S6-60 for Bronze Age), the American Council for Learned Societies (1963 per The Slavs, Gimbutas 1971), the American Philosophical Society, the Humanities Endowment, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. From Prehistory the second edition came out and Bronze Age Cultures gained recognition then and continues to be a rich and enduring monograph.

When he arrived at UCLA, his positions included Research Fellow of Harvard's Peabody Museum (19S S-63), Fellow of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study (1961-62), and Lecturer in Harvard's Department of Anthropology ( 1962-63). His resume was that of an active researcher in the archeology of the Baltics, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She became known as the author of a dynamic model of the homeland, social structure, and archeology of PIE speakers.
Furthermore, he had written and lectured on Baltic and Slavic folklore, mythology, and symbolism. Her marriage had dissolved in 1963, and in 1964 she moved to Los Angeles to continue her career as a researcher and teacher at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the relative informality of UCLA's academic community, which she described as more accessible and lively than that of Germany or Harvard, Marija's work flourished: as professor of European archeology and Indo-European studies and, in 1966, as editor of the Old World Archeology for the Museum and Workshops of Ethnic Arts and Technologies (now the Fowler Museum of Cultural History), regularly offered graduate courses and seminars on Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, as well as Baltic and Slavic folklore and mythology .

A charismatic person, extremely popular among students, full of charm – generous, hospitable – she settled happily in the Santa Monica Mountain community of Topanga with her daughters. She hosted (often at home) visiting scholars[20] and student seminars, he served on countless commissions[21] and editorial boards[22]. He taught, wrote, and published literally hundreds of book reviews and articles and more than a dozen monographs and books, and lectured extensively.[23]. He accepted scholarships[24], awards and honors[25], participated (Gimbutas I970b; 1972a; 1973c; 1974c; 1980b) and organized conferences[26]. Determined and energetic, Marija Gimbutas planned and launched five excavations between 1967 and 1978 and saw all but one of them published before the cancer that took her life began to sap her strength.
THE EXCAVATIONS
Fieldwork took her to Europe as a professional and in every rural area she felt at home. Her lack of comfort did not worry her and she knew how to achieve her goals in any condition. Each excavation has its own story, but Figure 8 presents the radiocarbon dates of her five excavations and thus illustrates the impact it had on her thinking a database which represented 4000 years of prehistory. His way of sharing information was always to provide an informed summary based on what he considered essential. With this data, she felt confident in her conclusions.

Obre, Bosnia: 1967-69 (Gimbutas 1974a; Benac 1973)
Precisely at the same time as his arrival at UCLA, some counterpart funds became available[27] managed by the Smithsonian Institution. After some preliminary discussions with Dr. Alojz Benac during a previous trip, Marija requested and obtained a joint project with Benac and the Zemalski Museum in Sarajevo. Marija and her students arrived in the summer of 1967. Since the UCLA team wanted to store a certain amount of samples and Benac was not accustomed to this methodology (sieving, flotation, etc.), the co-directors decided to open two separate but equal areas. It is interesting to compare the relationships (Benac 1973; Gimbutas 1974a). Both are in-depth and feature a huge amount of data.
Marija was not a “new” archaeologist, but she knew what was happening in her field and had certainly met Lewis Binford, then a professor of Anthropology at the University of California. She appointed Eugene Sterud, an anthropologist and archaeologist and one of her graduate students with considerable field experience in California and Europe (and recommended by Colin Renfrew), as camp director[28]. Benac's large team opened up a large area, uncovering impressive structural remains that provided an important insight into the layout of the village. The UCLA team focused on a smaller excavation, obtaining carefully controlled stratigraphy, samples for radiocarbon dating, and a quantitative assemblage of vessels, lithic tools, bone tools, along with polished and ground stones, as well as zoological and botanical samples to be analyzed. The American approach allows you to literally fill in the picture with what the villagers ate, planted, grazed, hunted, gathered, traded, and the trades they practiced and how they changed over time. Finally, with Eugene Sterud at the head of the field, her quantitative recovery, and her in-depth report (Sterud and Sterud 1974), Marija could concentrate on the kind of reporting she did so well: a descriptive, thorough, and confident synthesis.
Sitagroi, Drama, Greece: 1969-70 (Renfrew, Gimbutas and Elster 1986; Elster and Renfrew 2003)
Marija and Colin Renfrew planned the excavation at Sitagroi together during the latter's visit to UCLA in the winter/spring of 1967, before Marija left for Obre to open the first excavation season. Colin was then in Sheffield, but Marija had already visited the site (Saliagos) in the Cyclades Islands where he and John Evans were excavating (Evans and Renfrew 1968). Marija and Colin were a great couple at the time: there was mutual respect and they admired each other's knowledge and energy. At UCLA, they outlined and prepared an application to the National Science Foundation for a joint Sheffield-UCLA project in northeastern Greece, which at the time was roughly unknown land[29]. In July 1968, Colin inaugurated the first of three seasons at Sitagroi (in which he was very involved), with support from the British School of Archeology and funding from the National Science Foundation and British sources. Marija went to Sitagroi during part of the excavation seasons; Colin Renfrew directed operations in both the field and the laboratory.

Marija's interest in the ubiquitous figurines from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in Greece and the Balkans was particularly stimulated by the remarkable corpus unearthed at Sitagroi. Obre had never returned anything like this. While at Sitagroi, Renfrew and she organized a seminar to which Jean Deshayes, director of the French excavation of Dikili Tash, was invited along with his team. Marija talked about the statuettes and her interpretation. Deshayes and his students were thoughtful; Sitagroi's team had many questions and Renfrew was very sceptical. However, Marija was confident in her interpretations and was enthusiastic about the richness and variety of the ensemble. The work at Sitagroi ended after the 1970 study season and with an impressive corpus of 200 figurines that Marija published in full in the monograph of the excavation (Gimbutas 1986b).
They formed an important part of his thesis on prehistoric religion introduced in his first volume on the pantheon of Ancient Europe (Gimbutas 1974b). Both Marija and Renfrew aimed to obtain as many samples as possible from clear archaeological contexts for radiocarbon dating. The 29 determinations were many more than had been obtained thus far from any other site in Europe and led to a reevaluation of Greek and Balkan chronology with respect to Troy and the ancient Near East, provoking a mini-revolution of excitement, controversy and reconsideration ( see Renfrew 1973). The excavation report, published in two volumes, was well received (Cazzella 1984-1987; Chapman 1988; 2004; Grammenos 1988; Hood 1988).
Anza, Stip, Yugoslav Macedonia: 1969-70 (Gimbutas 1976)
As the chronological table indicates (Figure 8), Sitagroi and Obre were partly occupied at the same time during the Middle Neolithic, but the Early Neolithic was not well represented. Thus, when the second season in Sitagroi was started in the summer of 1969, Marija together with Milutin and Draga Garasanin (in collaboration with the Stip Museum) were waiting for a permit to open an Early Neolithic site south of Skopje, in Yugoslav Macedonia. Veterans of Obre, Eugene and Anna Sterud worked in Sitagroi for a few weeks, until the “permission” telegram arrived when they left to join the rest of the group[30]. They all stayed in the hamlet of Anza, in houses in the village. Sterud organized the field work, as he had done in Obre, and directed the first season. The Yugoslav team, under the leadership of the Garasanins, established their own separate but equal excavation. Sterud's responsibility in the publication of Obre was considerable and for this reason he chose not to continue directing the field during the second season of Anza (1970). Marija then appointed Geoffrey Sayres. He was one of Renfrew's students in Sheffield who had shown a strong interest in studying with her in the United States. In the end, it was not a happy choice because, although Sayres was greatly influenced by American methods, he did not have sufficient practical experience for an excavation whose objective was to acquire a quantitative sample and reach the oldest levels (Starcevo). The second season proceeded at a snail's pace, Draga Garasanin became impatient and the excavation did not continue for a third season.

While Obre and Sitagroi presented important Middle Neolithic occupations, Anza brought to light Early Neolithic levels. His corpus of figurines and ceramics was therefore of particular interest to Marija, who now had a time span of four millennia to work with. With your co-investigators you had organized an international, interdisciplinary research team at each site; the analyzes of these three excavations revealed a large amount of data: botanical, zoological and geological, as well as samples for radiocarbon dating, tons of ceramics and data of a symbolic nature. Each of these sites revealed a subsistence model based on the domestication of plants and animals, with specialized artisans, trading or exchange of raw materials, and some types of hunting and gathering. Many classes of pottery and human and animal figurines, both natural and schematic, were found at all three sites and were ubiquitous at two of them. “Ancient Europe” was born (Gimbutas l972b; l973b) even before a shovel of earth was moved at Achilleion in Thessaly, which turned out to be Marija's dream excavation[31].
Achilleion, Farsala, Thessaly, Greece: 1973-74 (Gimbutas et al 1989b)
Achilleion is a small mountain in the eastern plain of Thessaly, near the city of Farsala. The site had been analyzed by Prof. Dimitrios Theochares, Superintendent of Thessaly, and one of the leading Greek prehistorian scholars of the time. He had reported evidence of a-ceramic levels. This intrigued Marija because she suggested that the lower levels of the mound contained a pre-Pottery, native Neolithic settlement. However, in none of the test pits or excavation squares was this expectation met. Marija wrote frankly that the first levels represented a “full-fledged Neolithic culture with proto-Sesklo pottery” (Gimbutas et al 1989: 2).
Working in synergy with Prof. Theochares, the Greek-American team was based in the village of Achilleion, physically adjacent to the mound. Work began in the summer of 1973 and continued into 1974, but both seasons were interrupted due to the Greek political situation: the Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1973) and the overthrow of the colonels (1974). Nonetheless, the excavation of Achilleion revealed Sesklo's rich sequence of painted pottery from the Early Neolithic to the Middle Neolithic, as well as significant architectural evidence and the ubiquitous bone and stone tools (many of Melian obsidian, indicating trade or exchange with those who controlled this resource on the island of Milos). Dozens of in-context statuettes were also recovered, which Marija published in full in the excavation monograph (Gimbutas l989b). She had long been convinced that the shape and unrealistic modeling of the heads of Vinca figurines represented facial masks (Gimbutas l974d). Among the Achilleion finds were several that fell into this category, including a small face mask placed on a stand. Thanks to these different classes of artifacts and notable comparisons with other chronologically similar sites, she believed that her ideas about pantheon of the prehistoric religion of Ancient Europe had been confirmed.

Scaloria Cave, Manfredonia, south-eastern Italy (Gimbutas l 980a; 1981b; Winn and Shimabuku 1980)
The exploration of the Scaloria Cave, in south-eastern Italy, is a project that Marija had organized together with Prof. Santo Tinè of the University of Genoa, who had first explored the two chambers in 1967, when he worked with the Archaeological Superintendence of Foggia. The excavations were conducted for two summers, in 1978-79, as part of the bilateral (Genoa and UCLA) Tavoliere expedition.

The site is Neolithic and considered extremely important. There are two separate rooms; in the upper chamber the burials of a "necropolis" used for about 600 years were recovered (Robb 1991: 115-16); Radiocarbon dates place the use of the upper chamber in the mid-1987th millennium BC (Whitehouse 1991; Robb 1980). The lower chamber has been described as cultic (Tiné and Isetti 1980; Winn and Shimabuku 1992; Whitehouse 8) and dated to the mid-6500th millennium BC. However, based on the calibrated dates (Figure 3500) and the variety of pottery, the cave could having been used from approximately 1990 to 1980 BC. Sean Winn (then of the University of Southern Mississippi) and Dan Shimabuku (also a graduate of UCLA and then on the faculty of the University of St Mary's, Halifax, Nova Scotia) were the field directors. Although Marija had conducted studies and photographs in Manfredonia in XNUMX with about ten people, the Scaloria Cave is the only excavation that she was unable to publish in full before her death; perhaps he expected Winn and Shimabuku to follow up on their preliminary report (Winn and Shimabuku XNUMX).
CONTRIBUTION AND EVALUATION
Marija's academic theorizing focused on the following main themes: archeology and language, identification and transformation of culture, prehistoric religion. In each of these she made significant contributions and, although her ideas were controversial and contested (even more so after her death), the result was to set the agenda in each of these areas. The different aspects of her legacy are all interrelated:
- the location of the homeland of the *PIE-speaking Kurgan peoples and their characterization as patriarchal, pastoral, horse-breeding, and warfare;
- the identification, location and characterization of Old Europe as matrifocal, peaceful and agricultural;
- the identification of pantheon of goddesses and gods of Ancient Europe (which Marija Gimbutas eventually decided was pan-European and extended from the Upper Paleolithic to the end of the Chalcolithic or Late Neolithic);
- the “incursions”, migrations or movements of the Kurgan peoples towards the west, as resulted from the transformation or Indo-Europeanisation of Old Europe.
Proto-Indo-European
For almost the entire second half of the last century, from the early 1997s to the 1952s, Marija published a series of data-rich and intellectually provocative articles and papers on *PIE speakers. In them, he synthesized evidence from historical linguistics, archaeology, mythology and folklore to describe the social structure of these peoples and propose their homeland and movements (Dexter and Jones-Bley 1961; Gimbutas 1963; 1970; 1970b ; 1973a; 1974b; 1977a;[32]. He placed theUrheimat in the steppe region between the Ural and Dnieper rivers of southern Russia and defined their culture as patriarchal, pastoral, metallurgical, horse-breeding (see Gimbutas l986c and compare with Anthony 1986), and warlike. Over the years he has never changed this basic model, developing it, reiterating his arguments, elaborating and correcting the details as new site reports appeared and radiocarbon dates became available.
She was always very attentive to chronology (Gimbutas 1965a) and fully embraced scientific dating techniques, as they provided her with a solid framework for examining changes in the archaeological record. Furthermore, she quickly realized the importance of obtaining numerous carbon-14 dates and incorporating the corresponding dendrochronological corrections and calibrations (Gimbutas et al 1976). From the mid-1981s onward, she argued forcefully that the kurgan tradition was *PIE, and, without much challenge (but see Hausler 1985; 1974; Schmitt 1974), her thesis was widely accepted for decades (Birnbaum 1982; Polome 80). Thus, he not only set the agenda, but he firmly held the floor until the 1989s when, over the next dozen years and up to the present, archaeologists and other scholars came forward to rejudge his theses (see Mallory 1986 for a comprehensive review of *PIE and archaeology) and/or challenge and reformulate the debate (e.g., Anthony 1990; 1991; 1995; 1985; Gamkhrelidze and Ivanov 1985a; 1987b; Renfrew 1988; Sherratt and Sherratt 1990; Zanotti 1985). Marija knew many of her critics and responded to many of her reviews by pointing out in detail the errors she noted and reiterating her arguments (Gimbutas 1990; 1988). Her most severe criticism concerned the model advanced by Colin Renfrew, who argued that Neolithic Anatolia was the homeland from which the first farmers migrated to Europe with their *PIE language family and their domesticated plants and animals. During my personal visit to the Renfrews, Colin handed me the proofs of his book with the comment: “I hope Marija doesn't get angry”. However, her reviews proved that she was. She first gracefully acknowledged her considerable previous contributions to archaeology, she highlighted her elegant and persuasive presentation and then took off her gloves. (Gimbutas 1988a; XNUMXb)! Later, in the last years of her life, she seemed to regard all her critics of her as her archaeologists with great equanimity, because she had moved on to her ultimate, fundamental interest of hers, archaeo-mythology, and to a new and respectful audience.

Ultimately, she remained just as confident in her *PIE thesis (indeed, more so) than when she first combined prehistoric archeology with historical linguistics. David Anthony, who had been quite critical of his model of migration of kurgan horse breeders (Anthony 1986; 1990; 1991; 1995), commented (in an email dated 29 January 1998):
"I would not be working on the Volga if Marija had not provided the initial opening that made it possible for a Westerner like me to understand and explore the archeology of the steppes. I have read her previous work very carefully and repeatedly, and I will never forget the first time I met her at a lecture she gave at Penn when I was a graduate student. I had already adopted a somewhat critical attitude towards some interpretations of her, particularly towards her scenarios of migration “waves” from the steppes, but I was not brave enough to question her and she paid me no attention. Afterwards, of course, I ended up writing articles about migration, because you can't go into this topic without considering the role of migration. And I will never forget when we met again, in different roles, fifteen years later, at an NEH summer institute, “The Ancient Indo-European World,” in 1990 at the University of Texas at Austin. She gave a week of lectures on Indo-European archaeology, and I gave lectures on IE archeology the following week. We shared a panel discussion over the transition weekend. We each introduced ourselves and gave a short speech about our general opinions, followed by questions. Her views and mine differed in some critical ways. I was a little nervous about getting up and disagreeing with her before my week had even started, while she was sitting right there, but it went pretty well. We were friendly. Then I tried to say something apologetically but still firmly, and she grabbed me and kissed me on the cheeks and said, “I'm so happy to have someone keep the job going!” I was amazed. I feared she would focus on our differences, as I had, but what she saw was just the common goal. She was a unique person, a great scholar. Very few people have the courage or knowledge to work on a canvas as large as the one she has chosen."
Fittingly, upon her retirement, Marija's former students and colleagues published a book in her honor (Skomal and Polome 1987). A few years after her death, a volume of essays on the Indo-European question was published in her memory (Dexter and Polome 1997). It was a fitting tribute to a person who truly set the agenda. The work and discussion continue, especially in Journal of Indo-European Studies, but also in other places (Chapman 1998; Demoule 1993) and with the related debates, for example, on the intellectual opportunity of a "marriage" between archeology and language (see in particular Blench and Spriggs 1997; Sherratt 1990; Yoffee 1990 ).
Ancient Europe
Starting before 1970, using data from dozens of prehistoric sites, many of them visited, examining assemblages first-hand in the field, in museums or institutes, and using data from his own excavations (when data became available ), Marija introduced the “Old European” culture, which geographically and temporally encompasses the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of southeastern Europe (Gimbutas 1973b; 1973c; 1974c).

These ideas were synthesized from research begun in Europe and continued at Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA. In his UCLA lectures and seminars on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Europe and the Near East we heard systematic and enthusiastic presentations based on reports from the original sites (e.g. Karanovo, Cucutenyi-Tripolye, Sesklo, Dimini, Haçilar, Çatal Hüyük, Maritsa, Vinca, Predionitsa, Tisza, Hamangia, Gumelnitsa, Serra d'Alto, Coppa Nevigata, Crvena Stjena, etc.) which concern geography, the location of the site, the settlement system, the architecture, the technology, the economy, the objects of worship, the ceramic styles, etc. The pottery from these chronologically comparable Balkan and Greek sites included very fine vessels, with bright two-tone or polychrome paint, or white fills that enhanced the incised designs, clearly the products of a profound knowledge of pottery. Also in these collections there were pintadere, the ever-present human and animal figurines and shell and bone ornaments – artefacts representing different technologies and symbolisms. Marija Gimbutas had conceived of Ancient Europe as a region of agricultural settlements with a type of homogeneous social organization. She had observed its millennial presence through the housing debris that had accumulated over time, forming the magoulas, the tell, or mounds described in the literature. He also hypothesized the absence of conflicts, due to the scarcity of identifiable weapons, fortified settlements, etc.[33] He compared old materials from excavations known for decades with new sets, the result of research in northern Greece or other parts of the Balkans that began after the Second World War and continued successfully. The concept of “Ancient Europe” is one of his most original contributions which, due to its association with the controversial pantheon of gods and goddesses, aroused limited interest and has yet to be evaluated in a manner free from prejudice.

Certainly the concept of Ancient Europe as a region synthesizes and organizes an enormous amount of data from a bewildering number of sites. There is an evident reworking in the material culture from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic: the sites expand and are occupied for millennia, ceramics are more sophisticated, the domestication of plants and animals seems more targeted. Trading partners have been established (e.g., for brown flint: Tringham 1984; 2003; for spondyle: Nikolaidou 2003; and for obsidian)[34], and the existence of specialized craftsmen has been inferred (Elster 2004; RK Evans 1973). Marija's lectures at this time seemed to result in a publication on Ancient Europe, and I have a number of her undated manuscripts that she indicated were written in preparation for this volume. At the same time, her excavations were proceeding in Yugoslavia and Greece and the immediacy of the findings - the Sitagroi figures discovered in 1968-69 and those of Achilleion in 1973-74 were fundamental - may have transformed the monograph on Ancient Europe into Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe: 7000-3500 BC (Gimbutas 1974b- Italian translation The Goddesses and Gods of Ancient Europe. Myths and images of the cult, 2016).
Il Pantheon of Ancient Europe
Even before her first excavation, Marija was deeply involved in the study of the various types of figurines and the multiplicity of designs, markings and engravings on pottery, figurines and pintadere. She wrote and lectured on the importance of interdisciplinary research, on how the study of ethnology, mythology, semiotics and linguistics could provide inspiration and/or keys to understanding the social structure and symbolic system of prehistoric archaeology. That was her model and she applied it.

While she names and identifies the small plastic sculptures, human, animal or both, as representatives of various goddesses and gods, the reader is left with some perplexity because she does not fully explain the path that led her to her conclusions. Although she is a polyglot and a prodigious scholar, in the goddess series she has not always presented a logical and step-by-step explanation of how she arrived at her conclusions. This does not take away from his remarkable mastery of data and his brilliant imagination or ability to synthesize and create a whole pantheon. However, we have to accept this pantheon on the basis of full trust in her. Likewise she deciphered the various signs and designs engraved or painted on pottery, statuettes and seals (pintadera) as the proto-writing of Ancient Europe. The pantheon, “scripture,” the nature of the belief system, and its widespread diachronic and synchronic influence are comprehensively presented in a series of richly illustrated articles and volumes (Girnbutas 1974b; 1974c; 1982; 1989a; 1989b; 1991; 1999) .
Archaeologists initially seemed speechless as Girnbutas offered his bold, idiosyncratic interpretations of the role of ubiquitous clay figurines and proto-writing: signs painted or inscribed on pottery. Here is one of the main, if not the main, scholars of the prehistory of south-eastern Europe, who moves at ease in a database voluminous and international. His great respect for the scientific community, which included paleo-zoologists, paleo-botanists, geographers, lithic analysts, etc., was known. who all had their share in his plans. She was not a "fringe" thinker, but an excellent researcher who was publishing her ideas on the pantheon prehistoric and its role in religion and symbolism (e.g., Gimbutas 1973a; 1974c): an agenda with which prehistorians at the time were very reluctant to engage[35]. Furthermore, his vision of prehistory was expressed in a kind of narrative. Even though it was excavation and always used hard data (14C, paleozoology, etc.), the prehistoric world was presented in a powerful, complete and indisputable narrative.
Marija's final thesis proposes a model of long duration for the goddess, with geographical spread from Spain to Ukraine and to be traced back to the Paleolithic, a goddess who is at the center of a belief system that has remained unchanged over the millennia. This latest development was not well received, because it is difficult to accept one long duration in such a large and varied geographical and temporal area. Similar to Marek Zvelebil, who proposed a belief system unchanging over millennia, observed primarily in the symbolism of prehistoric hunter-gatherers of Northern Europe (Zvelebil 1993). His archaeological evidence was rock-cut sites, carved objects, and the ritual context of burials, all of which he relates to a Boreal belief system, intelligible by analogy with modern hunter-gatherers in the area. circum-boreal. Zvelebil supports his archaeological interpretation of rituals and ideology on Siberian artifacts and North American ethnographic data, all belonging to the same boreal zone. In Marija's case, he defines and locates her matrifocal world and his before her pantheon in a specific time and place – Neolithic and Chalcolithic Old Europe – and subsequently extends the reach of that pantheon back in time, to the Paleolithic, and expands it to all of Europe. Most, but not all, responses from the world of archeology have been critical (e.g., before his death: Fagan 1992; Renfrew 1991; Talalay 1994a; Tringham 1993); but some reviews have been positive (Jakar 1993; Phillips 1993). Scholars of prehistoric religion have embraced his work (Berggren and Harrod 1996), as have many feminists (Eisler 1987; Gadon 1989; Orenstein 1990).
Transformation of culture
Marija Gimbutas' ideas on the transformation of culture are linked to the "encounter" of the *PIE kurgan populations of the Pontic-Caspian steppes with the ancient European natives. The author interprets the culture of the latter as slowly and inexorably transformed by the continuous "incursions" of the Kurgans, who moved (migrated?) towards the west in search of pastures for their horses and their flocks.
Marija saw two opposing social systems:
- Ancient Europe (matriarchy – peaceful – agricultural – goddesses)
- Kurgan *PIE (patriarchy – warrior – pastoral – without goddesses).
He wrote that the meeting of these two groups was catastrophic for Ancient Europe. Its flourishing Chalcolithic cultures were "destroyed", and in their wake the seeds of the Indo-European patriarchal society, languages, social structure and propensity for war were sown, a legacy that reaches today (Gimbutas 1977;1979;1980;1981a ). Indeed, the end of the Chalcolithic, i.e. the beginning of the Bronze Age in Ancient Europe, presents a change in the material documentation: sites are abandoned, ceramics change, craftsmanship and commercial collaborations are interrupted, the ways of raising animals, etc., but several archaeologists put forward theories that conflict with Marija's. Although she has been a leading theory and has set the agenda, she is now joined by many other competing scenarios (e.g., Sherratt 1981; Tringham 1990; Zvelebil and Zvelebil 1988).
DISCUSSION
Archaeologists have difficulty accepting Marija's interpretation of the social organization of Ancient Europe pantheon of goddesses, proto-writing and the Wear of thispantheon. However, before his conferences and publications on the pantheon prehistoric Ancient Europe, figurines had already been the subject of study (e.g., Ucko 1962; 1968), but the work had been embraced exclusively by the archaeological community. The ultimate irony, which seems to escape most of her critics, is that Marija forced everyone to engage with this material – albeit in critical form at first – and, once again, set the agenda. In this case, her agenda had appeared at a critical moment in social history, coinciding with the rise of feminist thought, and her ideas went far beyond archeology and entered the popular consciousness of the time. Thus, while archaeologists' reviews of his first volume on the goddess (Gimbutas 1974b) came out very slowly (Jakar 1993; Phillips 1993) and/or with much criticism (Fagan 1992; Talalay 1994a; Tringham 1993), with its reprint as Goddesses and Gods (Gimbutas 1982), Marija's ideas increasingly intersected with popular culture, supported by groups of women who found in her writings what they were looking for, "scientific" proof that God was once a woman and that women were at the helm , or at least equal partners with men (Eisler 1987). This response to her research provided archaeologists with the impetus to respond critically and above all thoughtfully (e.g., Hutton 1997; Tringham and Conkey 1998; Whitehouse 1998; 2000).

A problem posed by the hypothesis about social organization is that it is binary, with one system pitted against another. Scholars who criticize an androcentric worldview do not want to replace it with its opposite, a gyno-centric world. Those who write and research on gender and archeology do not wish to remain within the boundaries of “he” and “she”, but rather consider an integrated and complete set of men, women, young and old. What some archaeologists find particularly galling is that Gimbutas' model, according to which female control (Ancient European) was replaced by male control (Indo-European), was enormously influential. Since her name was known and respected outside of archaeological circles, and since her books on the goddess were excellently produced and accessible to a very wide audience, her voice stood with authority (for example example, Adams 1992). In any case, the criticism is fair because, in prehistory as in modern history, social control and the assignment of power are much more ambiguous than one might think by claiming that matriarchy has simply been usurped by patriarchy. Furthermore, recognition of this ambiguity, as critics argue, could lead to the study of a prehistory populated by people of all ages and all genders, rather than just two in a gender duality.

Feminist archaeologists have particular problems with what can be perceived as the hijacking of feminist interests in the past and their entanglement in a narrow interpretation which, they write, is poorly supported by evidence and problematic in its implications for feminist theorising (see, e.g., Conkey and Tringham 1995; Tringham and Conkey 1998; In addition to the problem, already discussed, of constructing a gynocentric view of the past that would be just as distorted as the androcentric one it seeks to replace, for feminists there are also problems with the version of femininity that the “goddess” interpretation offers. First, it is a unified view of women, in conflict with much third-wave feminist theorizing, which emphasizes differences among women as much as collective differences from men. Second, it is a vision of women that focuses on biology (sexuality, reproduction and motherhood), which the women's movement has historically been dedicated to rejecting. Of course, in the goddess version, the biological aspects of femininity are glorified and considered as a source of power, which can certainly be better than the androcentric version, which sees them as limiting and a source of weakness. Nonetheless, most feminists, including feminist archaeologists (and scholars in other fields; see Eller 1998), would be reluctant to return to a conception of women defined primarily as wives and mothers, even if this allows them to be goddesses. . I think these criticisms are very important, but what also emerges is a certain anger at Marija's refusal to back down or see her “stubbornness” about her goddesses (Meskell 2000). Critics and critics were clamoring because she didn't see that she wasn't advancing the cause of feminism, but she never claimed to be a feminist. It's like criticizing Harriet Boyd Hawes because she wore a corset and hat on excavations in Greece in 1995. Marija Gimbutas is a product of her generation and her experiences; to expect her to adapt to a change in social thinking that took decades to adopt and understand (see the important discussion in Brown 1910) is absurd.

Leading archaeologists today do not accept the archaeo-mythology of his later years; they find it disturbing that he allowed his ideas to be used by some fringes of the eco-feminist movement (“Gaia”). However, Marija was somewhat paradoxical: when archaeologists disagreed with her, she not only believed them to be wrong, but also considered them guilty of personal jealousy. Such a worried interpretation of her criticism made her vulnerable, and I think it was difficult for her to refuse the enthusiasm and support[36], and even worship, of “goddess” groups (e.g., Gadon 1989; Orenstein 1990). Various theoretical and methodological approaches, and intellectual debates, developed within the discipline during her years at UCLA[37] which have influenced the practice of archaeology: the “new” archaeology, processualism, post-processualism, Marxism, structuralism, feminism, but have influenced Marija Gimbutas's thought only marginally.

There were no alternative arguments powerful enough to convince her to change her model. In a sense, her intellectual development was shaped by her Lithuanian heritage and her European education and was not much influenced by the theoretical currents that followed one another in the last half century[38]. She was a role model and inspired many women who touched her life (e.g. Dexter 1990), but she was never attracted to feminist activism. She had managed to build an independent life for herself and could not imagine marching for anything other than the independence of her beloved Lithuania. Her death caused the birth of a real virtual trend: commemorations in newspapers (for example, Renfrew 1994) and in scientific journals (for example, Elster 1994; Skomal 1994); a commemoration at UCLA, hosted by the Institute of Archaeology, Indo-European Studies and Slavic Studies; and, in Lithuania, an extraordinary two-day state funeral, held in Vilnius and Kaunas. The city of Kaunas renamed a main street in her honor. In the fall of 1997, a conference was held in Santa Barbara[39] to honor her work with goddess groups, and the University of California Press is posthumously publishing an edited volume of her late writings (Gimbutas [with Dexter] 1999). Most recently, a video film about her life, produced and shot by a Canadian documentary filmmaker, premiered at a conference at UCLA, co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women[40].

In a review of a volume of articles discussing the archaeological contributions of V. Gordon Childe, Chris Gosden refers to the criticisms leveled at Childe after his death as “arguments with ghosts”; he states that “no one can come to any definitive or easy conclusions about the job or the person” and that this “will mean that both will be discussed for years to come” (Gosden 1995). These observations are also relevant to the debate on Gimbutas' work. In the critical articles I have read, the authors do not recognize Marija as their “intellectual ancestor”. But she truly is, in the cultural-historical movement of the second half of the last century and as an archaeologist who set the agenda in the Western world for the debate on the homeland and movements of *PIE speakers. By synthesizing the rich database of his excavations with his prodigious knowledge of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic archeology of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Greece, he was able to define the region as “Old Europe” with its religion, economy and social organization remaining intact for about three millennia. She presented the belief system and social organization of Ancient Europe as matrifocal and peaceful, revolving around a pantheon of goddesses and gods of fertility and regeneration. This not only set the agenda, but forced the discipline to take seriously a class of artefacts which had hitherto been regarded as belonging to the 'cult' and which remained impenetrable until popular culture began to celebrate the discoveries of Gimbutas.
In the end, archaeologists reacted with considerable disappointment (Fagan 1992; Talalay 1994a; Conkey and Tringham 1995), but more recently – as I write, ten years have passed since Marija Gimbutas' death – with great interest (e.g. outlining the history of the writings on the goddess; Hutton 1997) and with important works that propose different approaches to the study (Chapman 2000; especially Lesure 2002) and interpretations of the role of Ancient European figurines (Bailey 1994; Kokkinidou and Nikolaidou 1997; Talalay 1994b).
Marija Gimbutas was an innovator and a trailblazer; the big ideas she put forward created a momentum and an agenda that generated intense research and the publication of major volumes. And there is no doubt that her ghost has left a long and deep shadow.
THANKS
Doctor Zivile Gimbutas, Marija's second daughter, helped me in a particular way on issues concerning the first phase of Marija's life and I am very grateful to her. Three European scholars, Almut Schulke, Sibylle Kastner and Viola Maier had interviewed Marija in 1993 in Wiesbaden, Germany, about the years she spent at the University of Tubingen. With the help of Cornelius Holtdorf, I contacted them and they shared their pre-publication article with me. The full reference is below and I thank them for their generosity. I have discussed this article with many colleagues: Peter Bogucki, Shelby Brown, Joan Carothers, Lloyd Cotsen, Karlene Jones-Bley, Miriam Robbins-Dexter, Marianna Nikolaidou, James Sackett, Barbara Voytek, and Dean Worth, and appreciate their comments and insights. insights, which proved invaluable. The mistakes, of course, are all mine.
NOTES
[1] The excavations and dates are: Obre, Bosnia, 1967-68; Anza, Yugoslav Macedonia, 1969-70; Sitagroi, Greece, 1968-70; Achilleion, Greece, 1973-74; Scaloria Cave, Italy, 1978-79.
[2] For example, his work has inspired scholars of prehistoric religion: Abrahamson 1997; Berggren and Harrod 1996; Van Leuven 1993.
[3] A "partial", or "archaeological" biography, because even if I talk about his childhood and his education, touching briefly on his marriage, children and divorce, I essentially focus on his career. Much of what I know about Marija's early years comes from our conversations over the 30 years of knowing her. However, since I started this article, I have had the opportunity, for which I am very grateful, to discuss with her daughter, Dr. Zivile Gimbutas, professor of Comparative Literature. She was very generous, sharing personal photographs, allowing me access to the latest data that Marija had prepared and guiding me in the Lithuanian spelling of the titles and I am very indebted to her. Any errors or inconsistencies are mine alone.
[4] Among the bibliographies consulted: Vilnius University 1995 (the complete bibliography of Marija Gimbutas published a year after her death by Vilnius University); Marler 1997. Particularly useful were Skomal and Polome 1987; Dexter and Jones-Bley 1997, which contains selected articles by Marija Gimbutas from 1952 to 1993; Dexter and Polome 1997; see also Z. Gimbutas and K. Jankauskas (2005).
[5] My notes from Marija's lectures from the early 1972s include an early mention of Ancient Europe; see Gimbutas 1973; 1973a; 1973b; XNUMXc.
[6] Already in 1960 she was awarded by the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the World Refugee Committee as “Outstanding New American” for her efforts in publicizing the situation of Lithuania under the Soviets; in 1990 Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence.
[7] In 1966, an exhibition and catalogue, “Lithuanian Folk Art,” was presented at the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology at UCLA, for which Marija served as Curator of Ancient World Archaeology. In the preface to the catalogue, Marija wrote: “My mother, Dr. Veronika Alseikiene, now living in Kaunas, Lithuania, managed to collect this representative group of folk sculptures,” all donated by Marija to the collections of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History from UCLA, where they are still located.
[8] She once told me that somehow her parents were always satisfied with her efforts, but her brother Vytautas, eight years older than her, was often in trouble! Before his death in 2002, he was very busy with the Marija Gimbutas Archive at Vilnius University.
[9] In retrospect, he acknowledged the influence of both parents (personal notes, May 31, 1977).
[10] Prof. Merrick Posnansky (UCLA) was a Cambridge student in the 50s when Gordon Childe lectured on Eastern European archaeology; Childe once told his students that Marija Gimbutas was the only scholar who could read all the Balkan languages (personal communication February 24, 2004).
[11] In 1992 Vilnius University awarded Marija an honorary degree, which she commented as a wonderful, moving “homecoming”.
[12] Zivile Gimbutas explained to me that some of Marija's classmates at the university are involved in her memorial in Lithuania, including the doyenne of Lithuanian prehistory, R. Rimanviene (see “The Neolithic of the Eastern Baltic”, Journal of World Prehistory 6 (1992), 97-143).
[13] Marija had described their departure to me, and Zivile Gimbutas confirmed this description of his parents' journey through war-torn Europe. They were helped on their way by a sort of underground Lithuanian chain: enclaves of Lithuanians along the route, some of whom had already fled the first Soviet occupation. See also Milisauskas 2002.
[14] I thank Prof. W. Kimmig for his prompt response to my questions about the time he and Marija were students in Tübingen (correspondence dated 19 October 1997).
[15] She had been interviewed by three students from Tübingen on the occasion of an exhibition honoring her work at the Wiesbaden Women's Museum. They write (Kastner et al 1998) that she seemed satisfied with their interest in the years spent in Tübingen and remembered four fellow students: Gunther Smolla, Franz Fischer, Siegfried Junghans and Eva-Maria Bosset. She is included together with Marija Gimbutas in their article, where we learn that both Smolla and Fischer pursued academic careers; Fischer became Kimmig's successor in Tübingen.
[16] Campbell and Gimbutas had been in epistolary contact in the last years of his life. Campbell wrote the preface (Campbell 1989) to Gimbutas 1989a; he was very supportive of her work and urged her to send her papers for archiving to the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpenteria, California, where her papers were also archived.
[17] Hugh Hencken (1995) writes in his introduction, “Dr. Marija Gimbutas gave great archaeological assistance…”.
[18] In expressing his opinion privately, I understood that he thought the project would be rejected or not selected in a timely manner. He believed that the American School of Classical Studies was dominated by the Ivy League and operated as a closed club interested in classical sites rather than prehistory, except Crete, and he was probably right at the time. When I asked, through the American School, for permission to study the Achilleion excavation materials, she was skeptical, and then surprised, but pleased when permission was obtained.
[19] Prof. Dean Worth of Slavic Studies, UCLA, told me that his former professor at Harvard, the distinguished scholar Roman Jakobson, had telephoned him about Marija Gimbutas, urging UCLA to recruit her for a position; the rest is history.
[20] For example, Glyn Daniel, Colin and Jane Renfrew, England; Sandor Bokonyi, Janos Nemeskeri, Hungary; Michael Herity, Ireland; Lili Kaeles, Sweden, etc. His friends were often his colleagues: Nemeskeri analyzed human skeletal remains in Obre; Bokonyi reported on the faunal component of each of his sites.
[21] Marija Gimbutas and Giorgio Buccellati (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) chaired the UCLA committee for the creation of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program (IGP) in Archeology and the Institute of Archaeology. She saw the birth of the Program in 1971 and the Institute of Archeology in 1973 and would have been happy to see the two united in 1995, just a year after her death.
[22] She was the founder of the Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES), which is a rich source for continuing research on this topic; she is a member of the editorial boards of the Quarterly Review of Archeology and the UCLA Monumenta Archeologica series; president of the Association for Advancement of Baltic Studies (1980-82); elected honorary member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the Lithuanian Association of Archaeologists (1991).
[23] She was, for example, Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America in 1966 and again in 1975-77; she has lectured at 17 different colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada, as well as been invited to universities and institutes in Europe (e.g., the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Sweden).
[24] For example, Center for Advanced Studies, Stanford (1961-63); Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar (1973-74); and Fulbright (1981).
[25] LA Times Woman of the Year (1968); honorary doctorate, Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco (1988); “Language of the Goddess” exhibition held in her honor, Women's Museum, Wiesbaden, Germany (1993); Annisfield-Wolf Award for The Civilization of the Goddess (1993).
[26] For example, the International Conference on the Balkans, UCLA, 23-28 October 1969 (Gimbutas 1972a); the International Multidisciplinary Conference on “Transformation of European and Anatolian Culture 4500-2500 BC and its Legacy”, Dubrovnik, 12-17 September 1979 (Gimbutas 1980b; 1981a).
[27] These US funds had been frozen in Eastern European countries after World War II and were available upon request to the Smithsonian Institution's Foreign Currency Program for various types of cultural research.
[28] In a May 2004 email, Dr. Sterud kindly sent his comments on the excavation: “When Professor Gimbutas offered UCLA archaeologists the opportunity to participate in joint excavations with local Yugoslav archaeologists in Obre… I don't think any of us, including Marija, realized the implications of introducing field methods and techniques perfected by archaeologists trained in anthropology into an excavation program that had deep roots in the traditional methods and techniques developed in early exploration of the Mediterranean . In retrospect, the two approaches, although not well coordinated, produced two sets of data, one "extensive" and the other "intensive". The two teams worked well together and when one team discovered something unusual, the other team was brought to the location to witness the find. One situation, however, has been controversial… In one part of the site there was a pottery style in the deeper levels… with characteristics… neither Early Neolithic nor Middle Neolithic. The Yugoslav team had not found any pottery of this type in the areas they were working within the site… My opinion as to the reason for this discrepancy is that Obre… was a fairly large settlement and what we experienced was a function of the horizontal differences. The first phase of the settlement, whatever it was, did not extend to the entire site. We happened to excavate in that portion of the site where the first occupants had lived. The American team took great advantage of this opportunity. The Yugoslav archaeologists and museum staff were very accommodating and I think they handled their responsibilities towards American visitors and the use of American funds very commendably.”
[29] David French (1964) included the Sitagroi mound in his survey of north-eastern Greece as Photolivos, but the village of Sitagroi was actually closer and hosted the excavation team in houses in the village. In the early 10s, Jean Deshayes and Dimitrios Theochares and their teams had begun excavating Dikili Tash, another prehistoric site in the Drama Plain, about 15-XNUMX km south of Sitagroi. It is no longer an unknown region from an archaeological point of view.
[30] Doctors Judith Rasson and Joan Carpenter, both anthropology graduates from UCLA, had joined Sterud from Sitagroi, while other participants met the team in Skopje or Stip.
[31] It was a “dream” within his hopes: hundreds of statuettes in context.
[32] Many lectures were originally proposed at conferences abroad and then published, giving his ideas wide visibility. After the establishment of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, Gimbutas used this publication venue more frequently. Two of her former students, Miriam Robbins Dexter and Karlene Jones-Bley (1997) published, in chronological order, important articles on the Kurgan, which Marija revised and edited before her death, with the addition of an introduction .
[33] Recently, the “peaceful” culture of prehistoric Europe has been seriously questioned (Keeley 1996). (Keeley 1996).
[34] Obsidian (native to the Chalcidian island of Melos) was particularly important among the raw materials selected for chipped stone tools at Achilleion in Thessaly (Elster 1989).
[35] The spokesperson for the “new” archaeology, Lewis Binford, who taught at UCLA (1964-1970), had a mantra: “The world is knowable and knowable on its own terms.” He lectured on testable methods of analyzing behavior, but it was clear to us in his class (at least to this writer) that he believed it was not possible to reach the minds of prehistoric men and women. This limit to archaeological interpretation has long been overcome (Renfrew and Scarre 1998), but arguments are now offered very differently.
[36] Interviews with Marija Gimbutas: Interview on Lithuanian TV (1992); Baltic TV interview (1991); Wiesbaden Women's Museum in honor of Gimbutas (1993). After her death they continued: Seminar, “The language of the Goddess”, Bryggens Museum, Bergen Museum, University of Bergen (29-30 March 1995); Symposium, 'Signs of civilisation, International Symposium on the Neolithic Symbolic System of South Eastern Europe' Novi Sai (25-29 March 2004); and popular articles, for example, in the Los Angeles Times: Watanabe, T (15 October 1998) 'Searching for the Feminine Face of God' and in the Travel section, Spano, S (24 September 2000), 'Searching for the Goddess Around the Globe, from Ireland to India'.
[37] In 1967, for example, the faculty of the Department of Anthropology included Lewis Binford and important figures in methodology and practice such as Jim Hill and James Sackett. That was the year Marija invited Colin Renfrew as a guest lecturer.
[38] Some years ago, John Chapman and I discussed his idea that the construction of the theory was influenced by his idyllic childhood and the abrupt replacement in early adulthood with foreign occupations, periodic retreats, new invasions, the second world war, etc.
[39] The conference was organized at the Pacific Graduate Institute, where Marija Gimbutas' papers are archived. There has been much discussion about whether her documents were stored there, rather than at UCLA, her home for 30 years. UCLA was interested, but its bureaucracy moved slowly. Furthermore, towards the end of Marija's life, as her writings and thinking became increasingly focused on archaeo-mythology, she had considerable correspondence and contact with Joseph Campbell, whose papers were being deposited at the Pacific Graduate Institute. I don't know the exact arrangements, but Marija told me a few months before her death, when she was already bedridden, that she was sure that the PGI would provide her with adequate assistance; the archive is named after Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas. Her archive includes thousands of photographic slides, correspondence over the years, her articles, manuscripts, prints and several files of colleagues' prints, in addition to her vast library. The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences also established a Marija Gimbutas archive (1994) with copies of all her works. I believe UCLA was her first choice, but the bureaucratic negotiations with a large institution were exhausting and her strength was low. PGI has simplified all the agreements and now keeps everything.
[40] The “Signs Out of Time” conference was held at UCLA on September 18, 2004, and was sponsored by the UCLA Women's Studies Program and two San Francisco organizations, the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Women's History Project. It included a reception, an art exhibit, a book table and Belili Productions' presentation of “Signs Out of Time. The Story of Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas,” a documentary by Donna Read and Starhawk, narrated by Olympia Dukakis, which was followed by a panel discussion with Donna Read, joined by Juvile Gimbutas, Miriam Robbins Dexter and Richard Buchen (of the Pacifica Institute).
ORIGINAL TEXT WITH BIBLIOGRAPHY
Based on the book:
Sue Hamilton, Ruth D. Whitehouse and Katherine I. Wright – Archeology and women: ancient and modern issues – Left Coast Press – United States of America 2007.
Giusi translation by Crescenzo, iconographic research by Elvira Visciola.
The following photo gallery refers to the conference “Twenty years of studies on the Goddess” held in Rome in 2014, photos kindly provided by the author Anna Lami and Laima Associazione Culturale.























































































