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This book is a biography and reception history of the Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). It presents the first transnational account of Gimbutas' life based on historical research, and an original examination of the impact of her ideas in various feminist contexts, both academic and popular.
At the core of this book is a success story of an Eastern European woman who survived both Soviet and Nazi occupations of her homeland, lived as a displaced person in postwar Germany, and built her career and scholarly authority within the androcentric American academia. At the same time, it is also a story of a controversy, which followed Gimbutas' theory of Old Europe - a prehistoric civilization, characterized by peacefulness, egalitarianism, women's leadership, and the worship of the Great Goddess. First introduced in 1974, this theory inspired women's movements worldwide, but was harshly criticized by other archaeologists. This book examines the various intellectual contexts (feminist, nationalist, theoretical) in which Gimbutas' ideas were formed, received, and interpreted, as well as appropriated for different political goals.
This timely study will appeal to scholars and students in the following fields: history of archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, gender studies, feminist studies, women's history, Baltic studies, and religion and spirituality.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Writing Marija Gimbutas; PART I: The Making of Marija Gimbutas in National and Transnational Contexts: A Critical Biography; Chapter 2. From Interwar Vilnius to Postwar Germany; Chapter 3. Life and Career in the U.S.; PART II: Transnational Feminist Reception of Marija Gimbutas: Archaeology, Spirituality, and Nationalism; Chapter 4. New Archaeology, Old Europe, and the Feminist Science Debates: Marija Gimbutas' "Pre-Her-Story" in Academia; Chapter 5. Searching for Old Europe: Marija Gimbutas and the Problem of Cultural Appropriation in Feminist Spirituality; Chapter 6. The Archaeologist of Nation and Gender: Gimbutas and Post-Socialist Lithuanian Feminism; Chapter 7. Conclusion.
About the author
Rasa Navickaitė is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include gender and sexuality studies, history of science, Eastern European politics and societies.
Summary
This book is a biography and reception history of the Lithuanian–American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). It presents the first transnational account of Gimbutas’ life based on historical research, and an original examination of the impact of her ideas in various feminist contexts, both academic and popular.
