Joan Marler
The Iconography and Social Structure of
Old Europe:
The Archaeomythological Research of Marija Gimbutas
Lithuanian/American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994)[1] was
a pioneer in the study of the symbolic imagery of the earliest farming
peoples of Europe. Her primary research and interpretations of European
prehistory have been at the center of the most crucial debates on European
genesis for more than four decades. In her view, the settlement patterns,
burial evidence, and iconographic imagery of the cultures she called "Old
Europe" [2] reflect peaceful, matrilineal,
endogamous social structures that were economically egalitarian in which
women were honored at the center of ceremonial life.[3]
Old Europe
Between the seventh and fifth millennia BC, communities throughout southeast
Europe developed mixed horticultural economies,[4] villages
with well-built houses, an abundance of sculptural and ceramic art, craft
specialization including weaving and metallurgy, and elaborate ritual traditions.
There is abundant evidence for long-distance trade as well as the use of
a linear script within a ritual context. Examples of long-lived Old
European societies include the Sesklo culture in Thessaly and southern
Macedonia from c. 6500-5500 BC, followed by the Dimini culture, c. 5500-4000
BC; the Star?evo culture of the central Balkans, c. 6300-5300 BC, followed
by the Vin?a culture c. 5400-c. 4100 BC; the Cucuteni/Tripolye culture,
c. 4800-3500 BC in Moldavia and the Ukraine; the Butmir culture in Bosnia,
c. 5300-4300 BC; the Karanovo sites in central Bulgaria from the early
sixth to the mid-fifth millennium; and the Linearbandkeramik, spanning
central Europe, c. 5500-4500 BC, among others BC (see Gimbutas 1991). Although
distinctive cultures developed over a large geological region, Gimbutas
and other scholars have described similarities in economy, social structure
and ritual activities within the Neolithic period (Gimbutas 1956, 1974,
1989, 1991; Whittle 1985: 64; Milisauskas 2002). Considered together,
the non-Indo-European Neolithic societies which Gimbutas referred to as
the "civilization of Old Europe" reached a florescence of cultural
development during the fifth millennium BC made possible by long-term dynamic
stability.
Between 1967 and 1980, Marija Gimbutas directed five major excavations
of early Neolithic sites in Bosnia, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy. [5] The
development of calibrated radiocarbon dating revealed the true antiquity
of these ancient societies. Gimbutas' Greek excavations at Sitagroi
and Achilleion yielded hundreds of anthropomorphic figurines and abundant
ritual equipment reflecting "the small, ragged remnants of a rich
fabric constituting the mythical world of their time" (see Gimbutas
1986:225-301, 1989:171-250). No one before Gimbutas had systematically
analyzed the rich symbolic imagery from Neolithic southeast Europe. These
items were typically considered to be "curiosities of art history
with no standard method of description and interpretation" (Bánffy
2001:53). Their contexts were sometimes not even recorded. As
Gimbutas remarked, "I saw thousands of figurines lying in boxes in
museum storerooms, completely ignored and not understood" (personal
communication).
During the 1960s, proponents of the "New Archaeology" considered
it unscientific for archaeologists to investigate the beliefs of prehistoric
people. At the same time, excavations of Neolithic sites throughout
southeast Europe were unearthing thousands of exquisitely painted ceramics,
temple models, altars and offering vessels, stylized anthropomorphic sculptures,
often with animal masks and ceremonial clothing. Gimbutas recognized
it was impossible to understand the early societies that produced these
extraordinary remains without studying their abundantly preserved symbolism. She,
therefore, devoted the remaining thirty years of her life to an in-depth
investigation of the iconography and social structure of the earliest farmers
of Europe whose distinctive cultures virtually disappeared during the transition
to Bronze Age societies.
Methodology
In the absence of written texts, an understanding of the nonmaterial aspects
of culture is not possible through the description of artifacts alone. Gimbutas,
therefore, developed archaeomythology, an interdisciplinary approach
to scholarship that combines archaeology, mythology, ethnology, folklore,
linguistic paleontology, and the study of historical documents. This
methodology is informed by the following assumptions: Sacred cosmologies
are central to the cultural fabric of all early societies; deeply rooted
beliefs and rituals expressing sacred world views are often slow to change;
and archaic patterns can survive as substratum elements into later cultural
periods. Moreover, an interdisciplinary approach provides a corrective:
if an interpretation based upon one or more disciplines does not hold up
according to the findings of another, the initial interpretation must be
reexamined.
For Gimbutas, prehistoric images are not mute, but speak a language of
visual metaphor. Since Neolithic symbols are remnants of once-living
contexts, they should not be studied in isolation as arbitrary images,
but are best understood "on their own planes of reference, grouped
according to their inner coherence" (Gimbutas 1989:xv). In The
Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe (1974) and The Language of the
Goddess (1989), she discusses Old European symbolic elements as part
of a "cohesive and persistent ideological system" that crosses
the boundaries of time and space. Extremely ancient rituals and myths
that have endured into the historic period offer invaluable opportunities
for studying the function of prehistoric imagery.
In the folk culture of Lithuania, for instance, that Gimbutas experienced
as a child, the ancient songs, stories, dances, seasonal celebrations,
communal rituals, sculptures, textile patterns, even architectural features
are elements of a complex fabric of ancient beliefs arising from a deep
respect for the natural world. She observed people kissing the earth in
the morning and in the evening as though the earth was their actual mother.
The life-giving, death-wielding, and regenerative powers of nature are
venerated in zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. In the Baltic pantheon,
Laima, the cosmic goddess of Fate, who controls the powers of creation,
is a shape-shifter who can appear in human form, or as a bear, sacred tree
or waterfowl. She can be touched as stone, or heard in the
voice of the cuckoo. The Earth Mother Zemyna, related to seasonal
awakening, creates life out of herself and represents justice and social
conscience. The death goddess Giltine can appear as a slithering snake
or can be seen in human form standing at the head of a dying person. Ragana,
the death goddess who oversees regeneration, is a seer who sometimes appears
as a snake or bird of prey. Vaizgantas, the male god of fertility,
rises, dies and resurrects as the flax (Gimbutas 1999:213). Gimbutas' early
experience of these ancient beliefs within a still-living context informed
her study of Old European symbolism.
The Context of Neolithic/ Old European Symbolism
A profusion of dynamic designs painted and incised on well-fired Neolithic
ceramics and sculptures of the sixth-fifth millennia BC feature rhythmically
interconnecting spirals, zigzags, circles within circles, egg shapes and
serpent forms coiling and uncoiling. Similar patterns are found in
regional variations throughout central and southeast Europe in Butmir,
Karanovo, Bükk, Cucuteni/Tripolye, Linearbandkeramic and other Neolithic
traditions.
In The Language of the Goddess (1989) Gimbutas states, "Symbols
are seldom abstract in any genuine sense; their ties with nature persist,
to be discovered through the study of context and association. In
this way we can hope to decipher the mythical thought which is the raison
d'être of this art and basis of its form" (1989:xv). What was the
underlying context and mythical thought of early horticultural societies
that gave rise to Neolithic imagery? The answer is rooted in
the most basic life experiences of Neolithic peoples.
The creation of sustainable communities based on reliable food production
required fine-tuned responsiveness to ecological conditions and the progressive
development and transmission of traditional knowledge. Early human communities
were continually concerned with the fragility of life and the need to renew
the generative processes of nature (Gimbutas 1989:xvii). Human survival
depended upon an intimate and respectful relationship with the seasonal
transformations of the natural world – the fertility of the soil,
the abundance of water, the climate, the teeming presence of birds, animals,
plants and myriad life forms.
From this perspective, it is no surprise that many Neolithic artifacts
feature cyclic patterns combining plant, animal and human forms. Such interconnecting
motifs, by no means exclusive to Old Europe, have been created by indigenous
peoples on every continent of the world who share a sacred relationship
with the living world. These designs often express an uncanny resemblance
to writings by quantum physicists who describe the universe as a
web of relationships between the various parts of a unified whole. Physicist
Fritjof Capra, for instance, identifies dynamic patterns on the micro and
macro levels that continually change into one another in a "continuous
dance of energy" (Capra 1983:81, 91). David Bohm speaks of
an "implicate order" within the universe as analogous to a
hologram in which the entire cosmic web is enfolded within each of its
parts (Capra 1983:95). Anthropologist/ecologist Gregory Bateson refers
to the self-organizing dynamics of the universe as "the pattern
that connects."
Gimbutas writes that Old European symbolism is lunar and chthonic, built
around the understanding that life on earth is in eternal transformation,
in constant and rhythmic change between creation and destruction, birth
and death. "The concept of regeneration and renewal is perhaps
the most outstanding and dramatic theme we perceive in this symbolism" (Gimbutas
1989:316). The "mythical thought" at the basis of Neolithic
art appears to be inseparable from concepts of the sacred and a consciousness
of intimate participation with the cyclic processes of the natural world.
Well composed, dynamic designs are found on ceramics, sculptures, temple
models and on actual houses and communal shrines, such as those of the
Vin?a, Tisza, and Karanovo cultures where structures were painted inside
and out with great swirling motifs, formal geometric patterns, even three-dimensional
spirals (Hodder 1990:54-55). At the fifth millennium BC site of Casciorarele,
on an island in the Danube in southern Romania, a two-room ceremonial building
(16 x 10 meters) was richly decorated with red and cream spirals,
concentric circles, red eggs, and swirling designs which Gimbutas associates
with regeneration. A raised clay altar was painted red and two wooden columns
plastered with clay were elegantly decorated with interlocking curvilinear
patterns (Gimbutas 1991: 258-262; Whittle 1985:154).
Bourdieu's (1973) study of Berber houses is instructive as a way
of appreciating the Old European cultural environment. Bourdieu discovered
that children brought up surrounded by traditional imagery within Berber
houses absorbed Berber concepts through "an education of attention" that
focused their perceptions. As Malika Grasshoff discusses in
her research (see Grasshoff, this volume), the pottery, weavings and intricate
wall paintings of the Kabyle/Berber people in Algeria are entirely created
by women. Their designs are encoded with secret signs containing
an ancient cosmology of sacred female knowledge passed down from mother
to daughter. In a similar way, many Old European houses, sculptures,
ritual items and domestic implements were covered with dynamic patterns
rich with female imagery which created a visually rich symbolic context
replicated over many generations.
Iconography
According to Balkan archaeologist Henrieta Todorova (1978:83), more than
90 percent of the identifiable Neolithic figurines found in Bulgaria are
female. Of the two hundred-fifty anthropomorphic sculptures from
Gimbutas' excavation at Sitagroi, Greek Macedonia, none can be identified
as male (Gimbutas 1986b:226; Hodder 1990:61). Of the two hundred
figurines found at the Sesklo site of Achilleion in Greece, only two are
assumed to be male due to the absence of female attributes (Gimbutas et
al. 1989:198). Throughout southeast Europe, Anatolia and much of
the circum-Mediterranean world, a similar pattern obtains.
Woman's centrality within the domestic and horticultural realms
is emphasized throughout Old Europe by the overwhelming abundance of female
imagery.[6] Elaborately incised
Cucuteni figurines; enthroned female sculptures from the Tisza culture
engraved with complex textile designs; hundreds of Vin?a sculptures stylized
as bird-women, masked as mother bears, anthromorphic vessels, and thousands
of other images indicate a gendered relationship between the human, animal
and mythic realms. The refined stylization of form and posture of
many of these female sculptures, their ritual and ubiquitous contexts,
the frequent use of masks and exaggerated attributes suggest an association
with the sacred which Gimbutas calls "Goddess."
Although goddesses are well known from the Greek and Roman periods, the
idea that female deity was venerated at the dawn of European prehistory
with a relative absence of male imagery, challenges the charter myth of
Western civilization in which male dominance in both human and mythic realms
is assumed. The term "Goddess" for many researchers is
opaque and problematic, conjuring a utopian fantasy about a matriarchal
fertility cult (i.e., Meskell 1995). In actuality, Gimbutas repeatedly
insisted that the concept of Goddess is not limited to fertility and motherhood,
but includes the entire cycle of life including death and the reappearance
of life. Gimbutas defines "Goddess," in all her manifestations,
as a cosmogonic symbol of the unity of all life in Nature. "Her
power was in water and stone, in tomb and cave, in animals and birds, snakes
and fish, hills, trees, and flowers. Hence the holistic and mythopoetic
perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on Earth" (Gimbutas
1989: 321).
Gimbutas' excavation at the seventh-sixth millennium BC Sesklo culture
site of Achilleion in Thessaly provided in situ contexts for specific
types of anthromorphic and zoomorphic sculptures. She was, therefore, able
to formulate a classification system based on morphology and style and
to identify twenty categories of figurines associated with seven distinct
deities (Gimbutas et al. 1989:171). Bird and snake goddesses, for instance,
were found in house shrines. Sculptures indicating pregnancy were
found on altars near outdoor ovens and in places where grain was stored,
ground, and baked into bread. Figurines in birth-giving posture were found
in the courtyard at circular hearths. The fecundity of the womb is associated
with the grain that nourishes the community (Gimbutas 1991:228, 254). This
motif repeats throughout Old Europe on pottery designs, on figurines impressed
with grain, on sculptures with wombs sprouting like plants, on grain storage
containers in female forms, and bread ovens shaped as pregnant bellies. Neolithic
imagery is permeated by symbols associated with the life-creating female
body.
Male images found in other Old European sites, often in ithyphallic posture,
are interpreted by Gimbutas as "gods," consorts of the youthful
goddess in her springtime aspect (Gimbutas 1991:249-251). Evidence
for males as fathers during this period is absent. "My archaeological
research does not confirm the hypothetical existence of the primordial
parents and their division into the Great Father and Great Mother" (Gimbutas
1982: 316).
Some anthropomorphic sculptures have no sexual characteristics. Others
appear to combine both male and female attributes – such as those
from the Star?evo culture, c. 5000 BC, as well as sculptures from the Gumelnitsa
and Hamangia cultures in Romania. The combination of male and female
elements may suggest a unity, wholeness, a fluidity of gender, or one who
is "self-generating." There are also doubles, most generally
two females fused into one body, implying a bonding between women or between
mother and daughter, suggestive of a matrilineal structure.
Although many hybrid images are found in Neolithic contexts (combining
snake, frog, hedgehog, and other creatures with the human form), the bird-woman,
which Gimbutas calls Bird Goddess, illustrates the symbolic range and temporal
longevity of one of the most prominent visual metaphors. This figure
with a woman's body and bird mask, rendered in numerous stylistic
variations from the Neolithic into the historic period, expresses life-nurturing
qualities, but can also appear as a bird of prey or corpse eater, linked
with the powers of death and regeneration. The Bird Goddess must have
carried a constellation of meanings associated with the departure and reappearance
of great flocks of migrating waterfowl signaling the end of summer or the
beginning of spring. Her hybrid nature suggests a mutual identity
between woman and bird which has great longevity in European folkloric
traditions.
Social Structure
According to Gimbutas, settlement and cemetery evidence as well as linguistic,
mythological and historical research indicate that non-Indo-European Neolithic
societies were matrilineal, matrifocal and economically egalitarian. Gimbutas
rejects the term "matriarchy" because it too often implies
a hierarchical structure of domination in which women rule society by force
(Gimbutas 1991:294-296, 324-349; 1999:112-125). She writes,
we do not find in Old Europe, nor in all of the Old
World, a system of autocratic rule by women with an equivalent suppression
of men. Rather,
we find a structure in which the sexes are more or less on equal footing,
a society that could be termed a gylany [in which] the sexes
are ‘linked' rather
than hierarchically ‘ranked.' I use the term matristic simply
to avoid the term matriarchy, with the understanding that
it incorporates matriliny (Gimbutas 1991:324).
In actuality, Gimbutas' description of Old European societies resembles
the cultural and cosmological matrix of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra,
the Mosuo of China and other egalitarian female-centered peoples who call
themselves "matriarchal" (see Sanday 2002; also Goettner-Abendroth,
Sanday, Yan Ruxian, Lamu Gatusa, and Bennholdt-Thomsen in this volume).
According to Gimbutas, the prevalence of female-centered cosmological
imagery and rituals and the absence of signs of male dominance support
the interpretation of a mother-kinship system in which mothers and
grandmothers were honored and a female ancestor was venerated as progenitor
of the lineage (Gimbutas 1991: 342; 1999:113). The continuity of
women's traditions at the center of cultural life promoted the longevity
and cohesion of Old European societies. The spiritual and social
worlds were intimately intertwined. Caches of female figurines
found within ritual contexts, such as those from the Cucuteni culture,
may reflect councils of women who functioned as collective entities to
guide community life (1991:344).
The long-term development and transmission of cultural memory throughout
the duration of Old Europe (c. 6500-3500 BC) nurtured finely developed
mature traditions, a symbiosis with specific landscapes, and cooperative
balance between community members. Settlement evidence indicates
balanced, non-hierarchical societies. Internal differentiation
is not readily apparent within individual settlements in terms of either
layout or structure. [7] Long houses,
such as in the Tisza, Linearbandkeramik, Cucuteni and other cultures contain
no evidence of chieftains or "Big Men" and were most likely
occupied by stem families of matrilineal lineage (Gimbutas 1991:331; see
also Whittle 1985:63). Large buildings, used as communal buildings or shrines,
are often indistinguishable from residences except for more elaborate decorations
and a greater abundance of ritual artifacts (Gimbutas 1989, 1991; Marangou
2001:155). The pattern of communal shrines attended by several households
of women has endured to the present day in the Aegean islands (Gimbutas
1991).
During the Early Neolithic, particularly in the Balkans, women, children,
and youths were buried under house floors and between buildings. Habitation
areas functioned as realms of the ancestors as well as of the living in
which the sacred bond between women and their children was preserved even
after death. The burials of adult males are conspicuously absent. When
cemeteries of kin-related burials came into use around 5000 BC, there
is no evidence of spatial hierarchy in which rich and poor graves are placed
in separate areas (Gimbutas 1991:331; Whittle 1985: 89).
Evidence does exists, however, of burials in which older women were highly
honored. In western Poland, for instance, a 70 year old woman from
the Funnel-Necked Beaker (TRB) culture (end of the fifth millennium BC)
was buried within a huge triangular barrow, thirty meters long. Such
a prominent construction may have functioned for many generations as a
shrine in honor of an Ancestral Mother (Gimbutas 1991:336).
In central Europe, Neolithic male graves are associated with trade items
and tools whereas women's graves include pottery tools, quern stones
and symbolic items. Nevertheless, the division of labor between males
and females reveals a certain fluidity: quern stones for grinding
grain are sometimes found in male burials while stone celts for woodworking
also appear in female graves (Gimbutas 1991:133).
From the late fifth millennium BC in the central Mediterranean, hundreds
of rock cut tombs created in egg- or womb shapes contained skeletons in
fetal position. In Sardinia, the symbolism associated with these
burials included triangles, snake coils, spirals, concentric circles and
the use of red ochre as well as female sculptures with bird masks, sometimes
with prominent vulvas. In the later Neolithic, the egalitarian pattern
of kin-related burials continued in the collective graves of western Europe
where communities of ancestors were honored in large-stone monuments. Gimbutas
associates these graves with uterine symbolism in which the tomb functions
symbolically as a womb for rebirth.
A major tenant of Gimbutas' theory is that the deeply rooted Old
European cultural traditions did not produce the patriarchal system that
later took hold. The dramatic transformation in Neolithic social
structure, economy, language, and religious beliefs that took place during
the fourth and third millennia BC was not the result of internal development
of élite dominance out of simpler, egalitarian, woman-centered societies.
Gimbutas' Kurgan Hypothesis describes a progressive collision between
two entirely different ideologies and social systems (see Gimbutas 1997;
Marler 1997, 2001).
After the introduction of androcratic structures and the demise of Old
Europe, matristic patterns endured in some regions as substratum features
into the historical era. Ancient sources from Herodotus in the fifth century
BC to Strabo in the first century AD, describe cultures still practicing
matriliny, endogamy, matrilocal and group marriage with common ownership, and metronymy (naming
through the mother) (1991: 349). The Greek term for brother, adelphos, meaning ‘from
the womb' is a relic from an earlier time when kin relationship was
determined by the mother.
Matrilineal succession continued in such non-Indo-European societies as
the Minoan, Etruscan, Pelasgian, Lydian, Lykian, Carian in western Turkey,
Basque in northern Spain and southwest France, and the Picts in Britain
before the Celts (Gimbutas 1991: 344).
Beneath the intertwined layers of Indo-European and later Christian influences,
many Old European elements have been preserved in myths and folklore that
speak of a veneration of the earth, female deities, and women as cultural
and religious leaders guiding their communities. These motifs are
found in ancient Greek and Roman mythologies as well as in Basque, Old
Irish, Welsh, Gaulish, Norse and German, Baltic and Slavic traditions (1991:324). As
Gimbutas has written, "There is no question that Old European sacred
images and symbols remain a vital part of the cultural heritage of Europe
. . .the matrix of much later beliefs and practices" (1991:320).
1. For biographical information about
Marija Gimbutas see Marler 1997.
2. Gimbutas used the term "Old
Europe" to indicate the earliest farming cultures of Europe before
the influence of Indo-European speakers. She considered these non-Indo-European
societies to be diametrically different in terms of language, ideology,
economic patterns, material culture and social structure from the Bronze
Age cultural patterns that replaced them.
3. This paper includes references to
writings by other archaeologists to indicate ideas shared by colleagues
in her field.
4. "Mixed horticultural economies" refers
to gardening combined with animal husbandry and a measure of hunting and
gathering in the surrounding environment.
5. Between 1963 and 1989, Marija Gimbutas
was Professor of European Archaeology at University of California, Los
Angeles. Her excavations took place through the auspices of UCLA.
6. Ian Hodder (1990:61-63) also writes
about the centrality of women, culturally and economically, within the
domestic realm.
7. Even Colin Renfrew describes the
farmers of this period as "egalitarian peasants," whose societies "probably
embodied no hierarchical ordering whatever: certainly their material culture
does not reflect it. . . . [T]here is no reason to suggest the existence
in them of hereditary chieftains, and certainly none to warrant a specialized
functional division of population into warriors, priests and common people" (Renfrew
1987:253).
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