Well, then there is a need to define terms. I tend to side with academic definitions in this instance.
“ No, I’m not using it differently. Read some of the Gimbutas’ writings. She described whole societies in which women were in charge at every level of the society.”
Doesn’t it seem more than a bit romantic to you that such assessments might be made through her discipline?
From the LA times:
“ Many archaeologists believe that one reason Gimbutas has caught laymen’s attention is that she habitually presents debatable assertions as fact. Ruth Tringham, an archaeologist at UC Berkeley, says the evidence from early societies is far too murky to allow such definitive statements. “I would never write, ‘This is the obvious conclusion’ — there is nothing obvious about what we write. Whatever we write is always, ‘It could be this, it could be that.’ Our problem is that the public isn’t attracted by that kind of ambiguous thinking.”
She has all of the makings of a left wing (UCLA, c’mon) revisionist. And strictly by chance, a woman…
Not saying she is… but one has to use caution founded on common sense, at least to start.
When women archaeologists are saying essentially what I just said regarding Gimbutas (a demographic who’s motivations are least likely to be sinister!)… it’s not a data point easily dismissed.
Also from the LAT:
“Most archeologists think that Gimbutas’ interpretation goes far beyond the tentative conclusions that can be drawn from her data. Ian Hodder, a Cambridge University archeologist whose field of expertise overlaps Gimbutas’, calls her work “extremely important” because it provides a “coherent and wide-ranging review of the evidence,” but he rejects her interpretations of symbols. “She looks at a squiggle on a pot and says it’s a primeval egg or a snake, or she looks at female figurines and says they’re mother goddesses. I don’t really think there’s an awful lot of evidence to support that level of interpretation.”
Alan McPherron, an anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, buttresses Hodder’s view. McPherron says that after he published a book describing a dig he led in Yugoslavia, Gimbutas designated one of the excavated structures a temple, even though it was distinguished from surrounding houses only by its slightly greater size. “In my opinion, it’s no more a temple than I am a monkey,” McPherron says.”
Ok, these men could just be defenders of the patriarchy… (which is why I included Tringham’s remarks first).
This was the first link I found on the woman… and it immediately supported my initial instincts. The map of archaeology does not lead to the destinations Gimbutas would suggest… according to my smell test, and apparently her contemporaries.
Finally, it makes no sense. Why would men LET women rule over them? Because that is, after all, what would need to happen. Minus that piece of the puzzle, expect to discover that claims of matriarchies are false.