The Living Goddesses / Edition 1

by Marija Gimbutas, Miriam R. Dexter

Overview

The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity in her original—and originally shocking—interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed goddess-centered cultures that predated historic patriarchal cultures by many thousands of years.

This volume, which was close to completion at the time of her death, contains the distillation of her studies, combined with new discoveries, insights, and analysis. Editor Miriam Robbins Dexter has added introductory and concluding remarks, summaries, and annotations. The first part of the book is an accessible, beautifully illustrated summation of all Gimbutas's earlier work on "Old European" religion, together with her ideas on the roles of males and females in ancient matrilineal cultures. The second part of the book brings her knowledge to bear on what we know of the goddesses today—those who, in many places and in many forms, live on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520229150
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/12/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	306
Sales rank:	363,968
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Curator of Old World Archaeology at what is now the Fowler Museum of Cultural History. She is the author of Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 7000-3500 b. c. (California, 1982) and coauthor, with Joseph Campbell, of The Language of the Goddess (1995). Miriam Robbins Dexter, who holds a Ph.D. in Indo-European studies from UCLA, is a lecturer in the Honors Collegia and in the Program in Women's Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990).

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Images of Goddesses and Gods

In Neolithic Europe and Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia)—in the era between 7000 B.C. and 3000 B.C.—religion focused on the wheel of life and its cyclical turning. This is the geographic sphere and the time frame I refer to as Old Europe. In Old Europe, the focus of religion encompassed birth, nurturing, growth, death, and regeneration, as well as crop cultivation and the raising of animals. The people of this era pondered untamed natural forces, as well as wild plant and animal cycles, and they worshiped goddesses, or a goddess, in many forms. The goddess manifested her countless forms during various cyclical phases to ensure that they functioned smoothly She revealed herself in multiple ways through the myriad facets of life, and she is depicted in a very complex symbolism.

    First I will explore these forms in detail, looking mainly at goddess figures, and then I will unravel their meaning. The images of the goddess can be loosely categorized under her aspects of life giving and sustaining, death, and renewal. Although male energy also motivated regeneration and life stimulation, in both the plant and animal worlds, it was the feminine force that pervaded existence.

Figurines

Small statues, excavated from Old European settlements, cemeteries, and tombs, comprise an important source for understanding Old European religion. When the Old Europeans discovered how to fire pottery in about the seventh millennium B.C., that pottery provided a new way to express religious ideals.A variety of ceramic forms—vases, figurines, and ritual implements—displayed the spiritual symbols of Old Europe. Although Old European cultures continued to create religious artifacts in other media—stone, bone, amber, and antler—it was ceramic forms that most richly manifested the symbolic world of Old Europe.

    By nature, archaeological preservation favors smaller artifacts. Chances are better for a ceramic sculpture a few inches high to survive seven or more millennia under several feet of dirt than for a life-size ceramic statue. Consequently, we often unearth small images intact and larger statues in many parts. Most of these figurines can be held in one's hand. Their makers often etched them with sacred symbols in the form of facial markings, geometric designs, and signs that may have been a form of script.

    Our Neolithic ancestors not only created figurines representing certain deities, priestesses, or other mythical persona; they also reenacted rituals with these figurines. Discoveries include not only female and male figurines, which may have been made to represent goddesses and gods, but also thrones, vases, offering tables, furniture, musical instruments, and even miniature temples. Such miniature temples preserve the prototypes, adding an extra dimension to the archaeological record. Although ancient peoples created religious artifacts in other media (woven cloth and wood, for instance), except in extraordinary cases these have decayed. As a result, small ceramic objects provide some of the most important evidence for deciphering Old European religion.

    Almost all archaeological sites in Italy, the Balkans, and central Europe contain these objects, spanning almost every Neolithic time period. We also find them in Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia, modern Turkey), the Near East, and to a much lesser extent, in western and northern Europe. Often where sites reach several meters deep, representing centuries or even millennia of occupation, figurines occur at almost every level. In these significant sites, we can often discern an artistic evolution from the earliest levels to the latest ones, indicating the importance of these objects to generation after generation of inhabitants.

    The Neolithic, or earliest agricultural era, provides a much more fertile source for deciphering figurines than the previous archaeological periods, the Mesolithic and the Upper (or later) Paleolithic. The artifacts from this earlier time period often lose their contexts, and for the entire Upper Paleolithic, we have only about three thousand figurines. For Old Europe, with its great outpouring of religious art, so many figurines have been excavated at so many sites that we cannot possibly tabulate them accurately. Total Old European figurines may number one hundred thousand or more, counting all the broken or damaged figurines deemed unimportant in earlier excavations. Fortunately, settlements, cemeteries, and tombs, which provide excellent contexts, constitute the bulk of Neolithic sites. The innumerable Neolithic figurines preserved in their original settings intimate the richness of Old European spirituality.

The human body constituted one of Old Europe's most powerful symbols. As a result of modern cultural programming, we often associate nakedness with sexual enticement. The modern analyst naturally projects these attitudes back thousands of years and assumes that ancient depictions of the body served basically the same purpose.

    Our cultural programming also leads to the assumption that female representations invariably represent "earth as fertility"; therefore all naked female artifacts become "fertility figurines." The Old European cultures certainly cared about fertility. But, as we will see, the wide variety of figurines, and particularly their Neolithic archaeological contexts, suggests that the feminine force played a wider religious role. The many sophisticated Neolithic art forms accentuating the female body unveil a natural and sacred sexuality neglected by modern culture.

    In religious art, the human body symbolizes myriad functions beyond the sexual, especially the procreative, nurturing, and life enhancing. I believe that in earlier times, obscenity as a concept surrounding either the male or female body did not exist. Renditions of the body expressed other functions, specifically the nourishing and procreative aspects of the female body and the life-stimulating qualities of the male body. The female force, as the pregnant vegetation goddess, intimately embodied the earth's fertility. But the sophisticated, complex art surrounding the Neolithic goddess is a shifting kaleidoscope of meaning: she personified every phase of life, death, and regeneration. She was the Creator from whom all life—human, plant, and animal—arose, and to whom everything returned. Her role extended far beyond eroticism.

    The fact that these female figurines do not typically resemble an actual human or animal body belies their use as mere erotic art. The body is almost always abstracted or exaggerated in some manner. These modifications are not accidental: a brief survey of Neolithic art shows that the highly skilled ceramic workers of this time could achieve whatever effect they wished. Their intentional modifications of the human body expressed various manifestations of the inmost divine force. Before discussing the types of divinities represented by the figurines, it is necessary to focus on several peculiarities of figurine art: schematization, masks, hieroglyphs, and exaggeration of certain body parts, all of which were conventions used by the Old European artist.

SCHEMATIC FORMS

In Old Europe, schematic female and male bodies, in conjunction with other symbols, often represented the sacred force. Although many figurines are ceramic masterpieces, other figurines appear strangely unfinished, sometimes resembling nothing more than a single clay cylinder with exaggerated breasts or buttocks, or a pregnant belly without arms or legs (Fig. 1). Their makers often incised them with symbols, such as two or three lines, spirals or meanders, a chevron or a lozenge. These geometric symbols may have stimulated or identified certain functions of the divinity In fact, I believe that these schematic renderings distinctively focused attention on the symbolic message they conveyed.

    Schematic figurines comprise one of the most captivating and intriguing aspects of Old European art. Although realistic, beautiful likenesses attract more attention, many more schematic figurines are excavated than lifelike ones. This should not surprise us, because prehistoric art was symbolic art. Old European artisans could create schematic figurines easily, and, like the Christian cross, in religious practice these figures communicated the same symbolic concepts as the more representational art. These simplified images do not disparage the human body, as has been commonly thought; instead, they express a sacred message.

EXAGGERATED BODY PARTS

To express different sacred functions, figurines and other ceramic art often display unusual modifications or exaggerations. Female figurines, representing the complex feminine force, particularly show such enhancements. Some figurines show exaggerated body weight, and they have been interpreted by some as obese figures or "fat ladies." Undoubtedly, this exaggerated body weight is valued, since it appears on female figurines from several different cultures. Other figurines focus on the generative organs, the breasts and vulva, as well as the buttocks. Such emphasis enhances the power of that particular part of the body. For instance, many figurines and vases prominently display breasts. The tradition of emphasizing breasts actually began much earlier, during the Upper Paleolithic, and continued much later, into the Bronze Age. Breasts symbolize the nurturing and regeneration of life. The depiction of breasts on ceramic vessels used in rituals clearly shows the female body, and by extension the body of the divine female, as a vessel of nourishment or renewal. Although breasts obviously embody nourishment and life sustenance, their portrayal on megalithic tomb walls also attests to the comprehensive spiritual role of the Old European goddess in death and the regeneration of life.

    On many figurines, the breasts and the upper part of the body appear relatively thin and de-emphasized, while the lower parts—the buttocks, thighs, and legs—are enlarged beyond natural proportion (Fig. 2). The figurine's center of gravity, and its religious significance, rests in the lower part of the body. These figurines often display exaggerated vulvas and buttocks. Although we almost automatically think of the vulva and buttocks as sexual symbols, in Old European art they most likely signified life giving and sustenance, rather than eroticism. The symbolic value of exaggerated buttocks relates to breasts and double eggs, where the power of the life-giving symbol increases by doubling. Sometimes the artisan molded the buttocks of a figurine on egg-shaped clay cores or pebbles; thus she or he may have felt the interconnectedness of the symbols of buttocks and eggs. This symbolism was inherited from the Upper Paleolithic: on rocks dating to the Magdalenian period, in southern France (La Roche, Lalinde) and southern Germany (Gonnersdorf), artisans engraved buttocks in silhouette and marked them with one, two, or more lines. The early Neolithic figurines with egg-shaped buttocks often exhibit two lines as well, perhaps illustrating the state where one human being becomes two, in pregnancy.

    In both Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic art, the vulva dominates symbolic portrayals, appearing separately or greatly enlarged on figurines and pottery vessels. The vulva appears as a triangle, an oval, an open circle, or even as a bud or branch—a fact that emphasizes its life-giving, rather than erotic, role. The frequency and longevity of this symbol in the archaeological record (over thirty thousand years) speaks for its essential role in the belief system. Three large rock-carved female figures from Anglessur-l'Anglin (Vienne), in southern France (dated circa 17,000-14,000 B.C.), exhibit neither heads, breasts, arms, nor feet, but their vulvas are displayed prominently. Giedion (1962, 178) comments on the L'Anglin frieze, saying, "Had there been a need to represent the entire body, it could easily have been done in the space available. But apparently no such need was felt, and so only the abdomen, the pelvic area, and the vulva have been carved. The entire figure was not important, but only the fragment which stood for the whole." We can easily understand why the vulva figured so prominently among the script and symbolic messages encoded by artisans on figurines. On one figurine dating to about 5000 B.C., semicircles enhance the oval vulva, while a meander and spirals decorate the thighs and buttocks (Fig. 3). This symbolic combination conveys dynamism: growing, flowing, and turning. As in other symbolism, the feminine force is active and life producing. The goddess embodied the mystery of new life.

The faces of both male and female figurines display a peculiar shape: some show severely angular jawbones, while others look perfectly oval. This feature, combined with stylized eyes and other facial features, gives these figurines an otherworldly appearance (Figs. 4 and 5; see also Figs. 13, 14, 24, 28, below). Closer scrutiny reveals that these peculiar "facial features" represent masks. For many decades, archaeologists have failed to recognize masks on figurines, even those with a distinct demarcation between the face and the edge of the mask. In fact, at the Achilleion site in northern Greece (which dates from 6400 B.C. to 5600 B.C.), we found pregnant goddess figurines with detachable masks on rod-shaped necks. In exceptional cases, figurines hold a mask instead of wearing it (Fig. 6). In contemporary cultures that still use masks in ritual, the masks serve to personify a supernatural force. The ancient Greeks employed masks in drama and in ritual for the same function: to embody the deities, as well as heroines and heroes. Masks most likely had a similar purpose during the European Neolithic. In fact, the masks of the Greeks undoubtedly descended from Neolithic times.

(Continues...)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Editor's Preface
Acknowledgments
Editor's Introduction

Part 1 Religion in Prepatriarchal Europe
1 Images of Goddesses and Gods
2 Symbols, Signs, and Sacred Script
3 The Tomb and the Womb
4 Temples
5 Sacred Stone and Wood Ceremonial Centers
6 Matrilineal Social Structure as Mirrored in Religion and Myth

Part 2 The Living Goddesses
7 The Minoan Religion in Crete
8 The Greek Religion
9 The Etruscan Religion
10 The Basque Religion
11 The Celtic Religion
12 The Germanic Religion
13 The Baltic Religion

Editor's Afterword
Editor's Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Edgar Polome

The quintessence of decades of research....It excellently illustrates the various manifestations of the Goddess in the Minoan world and in ancient Greece, among the Etruscans and the Basques, in Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic religion....For sure, the ideas of Marija Gimbutas about the 'Old European' civilization are controversial, but they are built on strong arguments and valid bases, which make it indispensble for her dissident colleagues to take heed of her writings. -- Editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies

Editorial Reviews

This book is a rare mix of scholarly accuracy and enjoyable reading.
—

Anita Manuel

Gimbutas, a much-praised and consistently controversial archaeologist and scholar of religion, startled academia with her assertion of the realities of goddess-focused religion in preliterate Europe. This book, ably completed after Gimbutas's death by Dexter, was intended by her to be a popular treatment of her themes but also draws upon later findings. Wide-ranging and fascinating, The Living Goddesses should intrigue the curious and delight most feminist scholars. Highly recommended. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Another contribution to the much-ballyhooed theory of matriarchal prehistory, by the late feminist pioneer Gimbutas (Archaeology/UCLA; Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, not reviewed). Gimbutas built a career around her controversial claims that before Indo-European warriors invaded around 4400 b.c., "Old Europeans" from Ireland to Italy enjoyed an agrarian, peaceful, goddess-worshiping existence. Their aesthetic standard was higher than that of other cultures of the period, with sophisticated architecture, complex linear language, and advanced farming techniques. Their religious rituals centered on birth and regeneration, with female reproductive images occupying prominent roles. Many archaeologists have criticized Gimbutas's techniques and interpretations, noting that she reads more into the physical evidence than is supportable. Are all circles eggs, for example, and is every triangle a pubic image? At times, Gimbutas's claims, which she reiterates in this volume, nearly completed before her death in 1994, border on the ridiculous, as when she argues that the bull—generally a symbol of patriarchal dominance—was really a woman-centered image for the Old Europeans because the bull's head and horns resemble the female uterus and Fallopian tubes. The latter half of the book moves to a discussion of social structure, with Gimbutas maintaining that Old Europeans had much greater respect for women's rights than their Indo-European successors. However, Gimbutas sometimes engages in a circuitous logic, claiming at once that women were socially respected because Old Europeans worshiped the goddess and that they worshiped the goddess because women were already regarded so highly. Also,Gimbutas conflates all Neolithic cultures into one "Old European" entity, missing the diversity of religion and practice among them. The book is well-written, and much credit must be given to editor Dexter (a lecturer in women's studies at UCLA), for tying together Gimbutas's last works in an eloquent manner. Full of intriguing possibilities, but Gimbutas's work is too wedded to theory and ideology, rather than to archaeological evidence, to be ultimately persuasive. (130 b&w illustrations, 1 map) .

Kirkus Reviews