Marija Gimbutas Essay

The feminist movement we have today may seem rather new, since an increasing number of people, regardless of gender, are beginning to speak out. However, there were a multitude of brave, intelligent women before us who helped evolve the movement, women like Marija Gimbutas. Archaeologist and feminist Marija Gimbutas opened up the conversation of feminism, or at least pseudo-feminism, in Old Europe by sharing her “evidence” of matrilineal communities and an overall gynocentric society. Naturally, this led to vehement opposition from other archaeologists, like Lynn Meskell. Meskell found some if not all of Gimbutas’ arguments farfetched. Some of Gimbutas’ conclusions were indeed plausible though most of them seemed too fabricated so Meskell was right to be highly skeptical of Gimbutas. It was commendable for her to share such information on a large scale but unfortunate that the information was researched and concluded with a political agenda in mind.

To say Gimbutas misconstrued information, as an archaeologist wouldn’t be a sound argument because all archaeologists at one point misinterpret the meanings of

She tried to use politically motivated research and remodeled conclusions to bolster first-wave feminism and start a conversation. It was brave, it was respectable, it was smart, and it worked. She planted seeds in the minds of feminists and non-feminists and feminist archaeologists and non-feminist archaeologists, and gave them the water (“evidence”) to grow their own assumptions. The issue though, was that this water was not pure, this water was not water: this water was poison. Meskell was correct to address Gimbutas’ pitfalls; she seemed to almost maliciously misconstrue information, she overlooked evidence that clearly contradicted her hypotheses, and she produced farfetched conclusions for evidence that could not be explained in the scope of her agenda. She did this, and it worked, but it was at the cost of some of her