Marija Gimbutas, Mansplaining, and the Matriarchy

I am roughly at the mid-point of writing my book, Reclaiming Hel: Reconstructing, Redefining, & Redeeming Our Relationship with the Queen of Helheim, and I find myself feeling the usual author feelings of excitement, relief, and accomplishment coupled with exasperation, exhaustion, and abject terror. Seventy-two pages into my seventh attempt at bringing this book baby into the world, I realize that I’ve spent almost as much time with my hands in my hair, pulling it, or on my face, face-palming, as I have with them on the keyboard, feverishly typing. You see, in writing this book, I’m doing “that thing” that often makes a book a classic or an important cultural piece, but which puts the writer’s neck permanently on the chopping block: I’m killing a lot of sacred cows (no offense to any followers of Hinduism in this audience), and then politely turning them into what I hope will be a very yummy patty melt, by promoting a paradigm shift.

In attempting to trace Hel’s history back to its earliest form, I have unavoidably been confronted with the work of Marija Gimbutas at practically every turn. Now, most people in the Pagan community will likely be familiar with that name, especially if they’ve ever even stuck a toe into the field of anthropological/archaeological gender studies, but for those who’ve never heard of her: Marija Gimbutas is the archaeologist/anthropologist responsible for the “Kurgan Hypothesis” of Indo-European migration, and also for the supposed theory of an ancient universal Mother Goddess Archetype. This Lithuanian-born woman hailed from a period in the field of archaeology when gender studies patently “wasn’t a thing”; basically, she did all of her work and gained all of her accolades (a doctorate in archaeology, with minors in ethnology and history of religion; a Harvard Fellowship at the Peabody Museum; the status of Professor Emeritus at UCLA, as well as a Curatorship of Old World Archaeology) within the confines of what was essentially “a boy’s club”. Her “Kurgan Hypothesis”, which posited a large-scale migration of the original proto-Indo-Europeans out of the Pontic Steppe during the Neolithic, literally changed the face of history (and has been conclusively proven). With her background in ethnology and comparative mythology, she literally revolutionized the field of archaeology with her introduction of what she called “Archaeomythology“, helping to lay the foundation of the New Archaeology, and especially cognitive processual archaeology. Yet it was her later work on “Goddess Culture” which led to backlash and, in most cases, outright dismissal of her as a “serious scholar”. It is also that later work which made her pretty much a “household name” among feminists and the Pagan community. What’s truly sad is that very little of that backlash was based on her actual work–on things she actually posited, believed, or wrote about–but instead on the abject generalization by other writers who wrote about her work second-hand. In effect, she was literally “mansplained”–or, in this case, more accurately “peoplesplained”–right out of a position of authority, and right into the status of archaeological laughing stock.

Those abject generalizations have, unfortunately, become the accepted truth of what Gimbutas actually posited, believed, and wrote about among most modern Pagans and feminists who are familiar with her work, which only serves to further the agenda of all those in the archaeological community who would have her work dismissed outright. So, what are those abject generalizations?

1.That every single pre-proto-Indo-European artifact basically ever found is symbolic of the influence of a universal Mother Goddess Archetype. In truth, she never maintained such a position, because doing so would be ludicrous. Simply put: that’s bad science and, therefore, bad archaeology. To say such a thing would be bad archaeology because the only way to ultimately determine the symbology and, therefore, meaning of an artifact is by its context. Hopefully obviously, every single pre-proto-Indo-European artifact ever found was not found in the same context. In fact, Marija Gimbutas was an early champion of precisely such arguments for the practice of contextual archaeology. Yet when her seminal work, The Language of the Goddess, was published in 1989, readers and other authors jumped on one quotation in the book like frogs on a welcoming lily pad, and used that quotation to back their own claims: that, once upon a time, the Goddess was literally everywhere. What she said was this:

“The multiple categories, functions, and symbols used by prehistoric peoples to express the Great Mystery are all aspects of the unbroken unity of one deity, a Goddess who is ultimately Nature herself.”

Note that doesn’t say “the multiple categories, functions, and symbols used by prehistoric peoples in their creation of all artifacts“; it says “to express the Great Mystery”. In other words, what she meant was that artifacts that could be definitively defined as religious almost without exception represented a Goddess Archetype, who in turn represented Nature itself. Basically, she practiced good archaeology, but her readers and other authors with their own agendas then twisted that good archaeology into bad archaeology, via over-generalization. Basically: they “Trump-quoted” Gimbutas, long before the Orange Menace actually made that a thing!

2.That, based on the artifact evidence of a universal Mother Goddess Archetype, pre-proto-Indo-European cultures were entirely matriarchal. It would be easy to argue here that because she didn’t actually say the first thing, she didn’t say this thing, either, but in the spirit of fairness, let’s take a look at what she actually did say (especially since so few people seem to actually be willing to do that!). What she actually maintained was this:

“Since agriculture was developed by women [the former gatherers], the Neolithic period created optimum conditions for the survival of matrilineal, endogamous systems inherited from Paleolithic times. During the early agricultural period women reached the apex of their influence in farming, arts and crafts, and social functions. The matriclan with collectivist principles continued. … 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. … I use the term matristic simply to avoid the term matriarchy with the understanding that it incorporates matriliny.”

In other words, she literally stated that she was doing her utmost to avoid the term matriarchy at all costs, because of the “autocratic rule by women with an equivalent suppression of men” which that term necessarily implies. Instead of such an autocratic system, what she was actually hypothesizing was an egalitarian system, like those we find in modern agriculture-based societies (based on her scholastic background in ethnology, which relies heavily on the practice of ethnography, which is now its own field in archaeology). What is an egalitarian system? A system in which men and women are basically equal. Yet second-hand people with their own agendas latched onto those words “matristic” and “matriliny” and rode them like ponies, continuing to do so right up til right now. Nevermind the fact that “matristic” actually means “a society in which it is realized that all life springs from the feminine” (I could say “well, duh” here, but that would hopefully be unnecessarily redundant) , or that “matriliny” actually means “the practice of tracing descent through the mother’s line” (as is found in the original culture of the Jews, a notably otherwise patriarchal society), while “matriarchy” means “a system in which the rulers are female and power and property are passed from mother to daughter, characterized by the suppression of men” (think: Amazons).

3.That because their society was matriarchal, pre-proto-Indo-European culture was entirely peaceful; essentially, the patriarchal proto-Indo-Europeans were the first to bring war into Europe, thereby perpetually screwing things up for everybody ever since. Again, I could readily argue that because she patently did not say the last thing, clearly she didn’t say this thing, either, but again, in the interest of fairness, let’s look at what she actually did say, for a change:

“During my excavations, I became aware that a culture existed that was the opposite of all that was known to be Indo-European…We are still living under the sway of that aggressive male invasion and only beginning to discover our long alienation from our authentic European Heritage–gylanic, nonviolent, earth-centered culture.”

The theory of “one of these things is not like the other” has been a defining criteria in the understanding of different cultures–and the fact that cultures might be different, in the first place–since the fields of archaeology and anthropology began, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that Marija Gimbutas used it, when posing her “Kurgan Hypothesis”. Most of her detractors use other statements that she made, in an effort to entirely discredit her. Statements such as:

“There is no evidence of territorial aggression [in Central Europe between 6500 and 5500 BC], and the total absence of lethal weapons implies a peaceful coexistence between all groups and individuals. Villages have no fortifications except occasional V-shaped ditches and retaining walls where structurally necessary. Villages were usually founded on choice locations near rivers or streams or on lake terraces, and the use of steep hills or other inaccessible terrain for habitation was unknown during this peaceful period.”

They then use artifact evidence, such as images of battle axes which were predominant among the pre-proto-Indo-European Funnelbeaker Culture, and evidence of human sacrifice in the pre-proto-Indo-European world, to utterly discredit such claims. But let’s look at that quote carefully: note, she does not say that there is no evidence of territorial aggression across the board (as in: none anywhere, at all), but in a very specific location during an equally specific time period. At no point does she make the statement “the patriarchs came in and screwed things up for everybody”, either. Instead, she states that the pre-proto-Indo-European society was gylanic (i.e., egalitarian, which virtually all evidence wholeheartedly supports), while that of the proto-Indo-Europeans was not (which it patently wasn’t, and that has likewise been conclusively proven in the time since Gimbutas first posed her hypothesis). Yet again, second-hand sources with their own agendas hopped on such statements, taking them blatantly out of context and over-generalizing, in order to support those agendas, and that has, unfortunately, become “the gospel of Gimbutas”, even though she patently claimed none of the above.

I find myself wanting to arrange an “Otherside Meet and Greet” with Marija Gimbutas, because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that when my book publishes, I am going to be forced to face a similar amount of backlash. Like her, my words are going to get taken out of context and over-generalized, to serve the agendas of second-hand sources. Also like her, there will be those who desperately wish to discredit me, simply because they don’t want to hear what I have to say, because those things actively promote a paradigm shift, and paradigm shifts are notoriously inconvenient, because they require some group of people somewhere (and generally a very large group of people) to be wrong. And not only to be wrong, but probably to have been wrong for a very long period of time. Nobody likes to be wrong.

That very human need to be right is how we arrive at things in our modern culture like mansplaining: the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing. In other words, the problem isn’t that a man is explaining something to a woman, it’s that he is doing it in a patronizing manner. Let’s take a moment to look at that word in-depth: patronizing. If you’ve already noted the pat- prefix and think you know where I’m going with all of this, you get a cookie! The word originally meant “to act as a patron towards”, from the Old French patroniser, tracing back to the Latin word pater (“father”), the same root as the word “patriarchal“. Now, some would say that this suggests that the problem with mansplaining is, in effect, that the man in question is “explaining things like a man“, but the truth is, what it really means is that the problem with mansplaining is that the person doing the explaining is not explaining things in an egalitarian manner. In other words, the two parties involved are not participating in the discussion on equal footing: one is treated as more knowledgeable (the “know it all”) than the other (the person being “splained to”). And the truth is, anybody can do it–mansplain–so it should probably be called peoplesplaining instead. As can hopefully be seen from above, her demand for an utter paradigm shift has caused her detractors to peoplesplain Gimbutas, nearly to the point of academic oblivion, and the over-generalization and de-contextualizing of her work, in the process of second-hand sources attempting to use that work to support their own agendas has only led to yet more peoplesplaining.

In the end, neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy solves the problem of peoplesplaining, because regardless of gender, we’re ultimately all people. If people would simply come to understand that seemingly most simplistic of facts, the world would likely be a much better place. Yet that unfortunate inconvenience of paradigm shifts–that somebody is suddenly right, while a whole lot of other people must suddenly face that they’re not only wrong, but have been wrong likely for a very long time–coupled with the almost desperate human need to always be right leads to an enforced dichotomy in which somebody winds up celebrated, while a whole lot of other people wind up at the proverbial bottom of the societal bucket, and anything remotely resembling egalitarianism goes right out the the equally proverbial window, as all sides try desperately to “splain”.

I’m not looking forward to the shit-storm that I know is going to ensue, in the wake of my book being published. I am well aware that I am staring down the barrel of months (possibly even years) of being perpetually “splained to” by my detractors, while constantly being called on the carpet myself: “Mishy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do!” I can only hope that second-hand sources will not also over-generalize and de-contextualize my work, in an effort to promote their own agendas, in the same way as what has happened to Marija Gimbutas. Yet, maybe by then, I can organize that “Otherside Meet and Greet”, and she and I can quietly sip our cups of astral tea, while we watch the fallout. I’ll kindly have that tea alongside a patty melt….