The Myth of Universal Patriarchy: A Critical Response to Cynthia Ellers

Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory

Joan

Marler 2003

In 1993, Cynthia Eller published Living in the Lap of the Goddess (1993) hailed by
leading spiritual feminists as an illuminating study of the feminist spirituality movement
in America. Her more recent book, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an
Invented Past Wont Give Women a Future (2000) published by Beacon Press, seeks to
eviscerate this same movement. The key arguments in this book are not original and
were presented three decades ago in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lampheres anthology
Women, Culture, and Society (1974). The main thesis of The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory is stated in the concluding sentence of Joan Bambergers article, The Myth of
Matriarchy, from the same 1974 volume: The myth of matriarchy is but the tool used to
keep woman bound to her place. To free her, we need to destroy the myth.1
The political nature of Ellers book is revealed in the opening quotation by
Kwame Anthony Appiah: The real political question. . .as old as political philosophy. .
.[is] when we should endorse the ennobling lie. Such falsehoods, he writes, are not
only useless, but dangerous.
The dangerous, ennobling lie that Eller attempts to debunk is the recognition
that human societies have not always supported male domination in social structure and
religious practice. In contrast to Western myth of universal patriarchy and the hegemony
of a transcendent male monotheistic God believed to exist from the beginning of time, the
so-called myth of matriarchal prehistory posits, in its simplest terms, that women were
honored at the center of early non-patriarchal, non-warlike, egalitarian societies and the
powers of nature were originally venerated primarily in female forms. Male domination,
therefore, is not an inevitable, universal human condition and it is possible to create
viable, balanced societies in the future.
Eller tells a revealing story about visiting the archaeological site of Knossos on
Crete as a student and hearing from her professor that the Minoans were matriarchal. The
derisive laughter that followed from the other students left her with the attitude that
pervades this book: Matriarchal? So what? If a lot of snickering was all that
prehistoric matriarchies could get me, who needed them?2 Sometime later, she became
intrigued with the idea of female centeredness in society, which she erroneously
equated with female rule that represented for her a reversal that had a sweet taste of
power and revenge. More positively, she wrote, it allowed me to imagine myself and
other women as people whose biological sex did not immediately make the idea of their
leadership, creativity, or autonomy either ridiculous or suspect.3 After the appearance of
Living in the Lap of the Goddess in 1993, Eller became identified with the goddess
spirituality movement. As an ideological backlash intensified during the mid-1990s, she
reversed that identification by producing The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory which
safely positioned her as one of the movements most vehement critics.

Feminist Matriarchy
Matriarchy is strategically defined by Eller as any society in which womens
power is equal or superior to mens and in which the culture centers around values and
life events described as feminine.4 This carefully constructed definition does not
diminish the negative projections and historical baggage the word carries concerning the
imagined dangers of female power.
Johann Jakob Bachofen, author of Das Mutterrecht (1861), is usually associated with the
5
concept of matriarchy, although he actually never used the term. His English translator
substituted matriarchy in place of gynaikokraite (gynecocracy, meaning rule by women)
which he considered a prerequisite for the development of mutterrecht in which
daughters inherit rights through the mother line. This mother-right was conceived by
analogy with father-right rather than from ethnographic studies of female-oriented
6
social forms. For readers of the English translation, the term matriarchy became equated
7
with the idea of a society ruled by women, dismissed as fantasy by most anthropologists.
As Sanday deftly notes, It is impossible to find something that has been defined out of
existence from the start.8
Eller admits that none of the women who champion this version of Western
history call themselves feminist matriarchalists, and none refer to the story they tell as
the myth of matriarchy prehistory,9 yet Eller utilizes this term throughout her book to
cast suspicion on anything that feminist matriarchalists say. . . Although German
researchers, such as Heide Gttner-Abendroth do use the term matriarchy (without
confusing it with gynecocracy),10 the Lithuanian/American archaeologist Marija
Gimbutas and most American scholars reject its use as a description of prehistoric
cultures precisely because it has come to imply a social structure that is the mirror image
of patriarchy in which men are dominated by women.11 Therefore, the honesty of Ellers
use of feminist matriarchalists as a name-calling device must seriously be questioned.
Although contemporary Western feminism is far from monolithic, with three
distinct and nuanced waves of theoretical development,12 it is characterized by a
critique of systems of domination for the purpose of promoting equality between the
sexes while respecting the human rights of all individuals in society. Nevertheless, just as
the word matriarchy carries the implication of domination by women, the word feminist
commonly evokes the connotation of in-your-face-uppity-females who think they should
run the world. Eller gives voice to this sentiment: As if women would ever have run
things, could ever have run things. . .and if they did, men surely had to put an end to it!13
Therefore, the term feminist matriarchalists carries a dual negative which Eller relies
upon to strengthen her purpose.
The idea that not all human societies and religions throughout time were maledominated came as an awakening to thousands of women during the last decades of the
twentieth century. A tremendous outpouring of art, literature, ritual, and all manner of
creative expressionofrom the most scholarly to the most fancifulopoured forth from the
widening cracks in the myth of universal patriarchy. Drawing from research on the
womens spirituality movement, feminist discourse and anthropological theories, Eller
attempts to denigrate the idea that non-warlike societies ever existed where women were
honored at least as much as men. In her view this is a utopian, escapist fantasy.

There is nothing in the archaeological record that is at odds with an image of

prehistoric life as nasty, brutish, short, and male-dominated. . . [although] it could
have been blissful, peaceful, long, and matriarchal. Female and male grave goods
of equivalent wealth do not prove that men were not dominant, nor does the
absence of weapons of war among the material remains . . . mean that there was
no warfare.14
As a leveling tactic, she throws everyone who has written positively on the
subject into the same pot and admits: I make no distinction between the tenured
professor examining cuneiform tablets, the novelist spinning out imaginative fantasies
about prehistoric Europe, and the New Age practitioner writing. . .about past lives as a
priestess. . .15 Conveniently, the voices of respected scholars are disregarded as easily
as the most fanciful interpretations by New Age writers. Strategically chosen phrases are
combined out of context from many different sources spanning decades of published
work to create a series of parodies crafted for easy dismissal. The divisive tone of Ellers
book is typical of the antagonistic postures critiqued by such scholars as Deborah Tannen
in The Argument Culture (1999) and Phyllis Chesler in Womens Inhumanity to Women
(2001).
Matriarchal Myth
Eller correctly acknowledges that a myth has arisen that has tremendous
psychological and spiritual significance. The word myth, however, must be qualified. In
contemporary vernacular, myths are equated with lies or with ideological fabrications.16
More importantly, myths transmit patterns of cultural significance that promote balance,
continuity, and mutual identity within societies. The mythologist Joseph Campbell
emphasized that the deepest level of myth cannot be ideologically constructed, but is
generated from a perception of the wonder and divinity of life and the interconnected
unity of the cosmos.17 The viability of any mythology derives from the ability of its
metaphors to provide personal and cultural meaning.
More and more people are recognizing that the constellation of Western myths
and symbols have reinforced systems of domination, exploitation, and manifest destiny.
The myth Eller seeks to disqualify is inseparably linked with a rediscovery of the
sacredness of the earth and the necessity to cultivate respectful relationships between the
sexes and with all forms of life.
Research on Neolithic symbolism published by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas
during the 1970s and 1980s (1974/1982, 1989) coincided in the United States with
publications by Mary Daly (1973, 1978) Merlin Stone (1976, 1979), Susan Griffin
(1978), Charlene Spretnak (1978, 1982), Starhawk (1978), Carolyn Merchant (1980),
Gerder Lerner (1986), Riane Eisler (1987) and other scholars promoting the second wave
of feminism, the reemergence of an earth-based spirituality and the ecology movement.
Collectively, their research provided an historical basis for the rejection of entrenched
beliefs in the universality of male dominated religions and social structures and the
reclamation of womens leadership roles as creators of culture.
Eller counters: Discoveringoor more to the point, inventingoprehistoric ages in
which women and men lived in harmony and equality is a burden that feminists need not,
and should not bear. In her view, the matriarchal myth tarnishes the feminist

movement by leaving it open to accusations of vacuousness and irrelevance that we

cannot afford to court.18 Scholarship in every field must be continually refined, and it is
particularly important to examine the underlying assumptions and methods by which
interpretations about prehistory are made. But who presumes the authority to accuse
anyone of vacuousness and irrelevance for considering the possibility that women and
men may have lived, at some time, in balanced, egalitarian societies? Whose interests are
served by perpetuating such a fear of criticism?
Gender and Social Structure
From before the time of Plato, Western philosophy equated natural differences with a
hierarchy of inequality, leading to the prevailing conclusion that women can never be
equal to men. In effect, the doctrine of universal sexual asymmetry (interpreted as
inequality) has achieved the status of theoretical as well as political hegemony in Western
thought.19 This assumption has resulted in the naturalization of male-centered
reconstructions of the past that have dominated archaeology for more than two
centuries.20
Archaeologists have traditionally assumed that male activities in all societies
represent power, prestige, and spatial segregation, whereas females are associated with
subordination, domesticity, the burden of childcare, and the use of tools that are
technologically or aesthetically inferior.21 Male power is considered ubiquitous and is
observed even when there is none. Moreover, all gender, social, political, and
economic differences are typically arranged hierarchically.22 It has not been uncommon
for anthropologists to transform informants neutral statements of differences between
male and female activities into hierarchical gender categories even when the informants
considered the categories to be separate but not ranked.23
During the last thirty years, explorations of gender from a feminist perspective
have precipitated an enormous body of literature that challenges prevailing androcentric
bias in anthropology, archaeology, and numerous other fields.24 While the study of
gender has led to radical analyses of socially constructed differences between women and
men, a primary anthropological question continues to be asked: Have any societies
existed in which women were recognized as equal to or more powerful than men? Eller
repeats Rosaldo and Lampheres outdated thesis from 1974 that all contemporary
societies are to some extent male-dominated and . . . sexual asymmetry is presently a
universal fact of human social life,25 even though this conclusion was later modified by
Rosaldo to reflect a less polarized theoretical approach.26
Numerous feminist scholars have criticized the projection of Western assumptions
about the universality of male dominance onto past societies and non-Western cultures.27
In Female Power and Male Dominance (1981) anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday did
not make sameness of gender identity a condition for equality. After analyzing
ethnographic data from over 150 indigenous societies she rejected the notion of universal
male dominance.28 Two decades of her own primary ethnographic research has clearly
documented matrilineal, egalitarian, democratic relationships between women and men.29
Eller, however, who has done no such primary research, insists:

If there are in fact societies where womens position is high and secure, these
exceptions cannot lead us to believe that it was this pattern (rather than the more
prevalent pattern of discrimination against women) that held in prehistory.30
According to this non-scientific assumption, Eller presents male domination as
the most likely template for understanding all forms of social organization, even
egalitarian, and she imagines the broad pattern regarding womens status. . .as lower
than mens, whatever the prevailing economy.31 From this biased perspective she
declares: gender naturalizes male dominance and femaleness serves sexist interests,
was possibly created to do so, and will always threaten to continue to do so.32
Anthropologist Maria Lepowsky presents a different view:
A focus upon asymmetry and domination . . . tends to presuppose its universality
as a totalizing system of belief and practice and thus to distort analyses of gender
roles and ideologies in places with egalitarian relations.33
Ethnoarchaeologist Susan Kent notes, however, that egalitarianism is not an
absolute or static category and is represented cross-culturally as a continuum between
highly egalitarian and highly non-egalitarian societies. She nevertheless points out that
those scholars who claim that gender egalitarianism does not exist in any society
do so because they are unwilling or unable to see highly egalitarian societies
outside their own hierarchical cultural filters.34
Only by removing those filters and incorporating the full range of non-biased research
can scientists accurately document the complete scope of womens cultural roles
negotiating, contesting, exercising and holding power as autonomous agents and
individuals rather than as dependents or subordinates of men.35 To assume that women
have always been subservient to men disregards an essential body of scientific evidence.
To essentialize something is to reduce a complex idea or object to simplistic
characteristics, thereby denying diversity, multiple meanings and alternative
36
interpretations.
By this definition, Eller is essentializing the rich variation of worldwide culture systems throughout time by collapsing them into the narrow confines of
androcentric expectations. (The typical use of the term essentialist, however, is similar
to feminist matriarchalist.)
Feminist archaeologists Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector acknowledge that
archaeology has been neither objective nor inclusive on the subject of gender and that
contemporary experience of social roles has been used as the framework to interpret
37
gender in the archaeological record. Eller, however, relies upon the same traditional
framework that assumes a lower status for females in prehistory based upon womens
essential difference from menothe ability to give birth:
If it is possible for our ancestors to systematically disadvantage women in spite of
(or perhaps because of) their unique and essential mothering capacities, why
should it not have been equally possible for our prehistoric ancestors to do the
same?38

She continues: If gender exists only (or primarily) as the means through which
oppression is achieved, surely there can be no merit in reifying it, as feminist
matriarchalists do.39
Women and Nature
In 1974, Sherry Ortner published her landmark article Is Female to Male as Nature is to
Culture? in which she gives voice to entrenched Western attitudes by attributing the
devaluation of womens status to a closeness with nature, while associating men with
culture and higher human activities. Although she admits in her conclusion that the
whole scheme is a construct of culture rather than a fact of nature,40 the task of
elevating women to a level equal with men is described as exceedingly difficult due to
the reality of female biology and the perceived universality of male dominance.
At precisely the same period, during the mid-1970s, a movement arose sometimes
referred to as Cultural Feminism. Cultural feminists refused to accept the inevitability
of womens oppression, focusing instead on the role acculturation plays in perpetuating
the dynamics of sexual inequality.41 Instead of attempting to transcend and control the
body, women began to seek liberation from oppression by embracing and redefining
femaleness on their own terms and by personally investigating internalized oppression,
rather than focusing primarily on external factors. Women began to celebrate their
relationship with the cycles of the earth, cultivating a new respect for the female body in
contrast to prevailing attitudes of shame and inferiority. A deepening alignment between
embodied spirituality and a responsive kinship with all of life connected the personal
with the political as expressed in this excerpt by author/activist Starhawk:
If the sacred is immanent in nature, then we no longer have license to exploit,
pollute and destroy the natural systems which sustain life. If the sacred is
embodied, then our bodies carry with them a sacred authority. If the earth herself
is the location of the sacred, then we must learn to live in harmony with the
earth.42
Subsequent investigations into the origin of patriarchy, the search for evidence of
balanced, egalitarian cultures, the cultivation of an earth-based spirituality and the desire
to create more balanced and humane societies are at the core of what Eller derisively calls
the matriarchal myth. This movement that embraces nature and the body, experienced by
many as a dynamic process of spiritual and cultural renewal, was and is seen by certain
feminists (and anti-feminists as well) as embarrassing and ultimately regressive,
illustrating a major bifurcation within the feminist movement.
Eller acknowledges that women from many socioeconomic, ethnic, and
educational backgroundsomarried, single, lesbian, bisexual, and straight, with no one
status dominatingo have been inspired by the so-called matriarchal myth. It is true that
many women from diverse backgrounds and lifestyles have come to honor the Sacred in
female forms, and celebrate the entire range of female (read human) capacities, while
holding the conviction that male domination is not inevitable. In spite of abundant
evidence to the contrary, Eller nevertheless asserts that the matriarchal myth rests on
gendered stereotypes that

work to flatten out differences among women; to exaggerate differences between

women and men; and to hand women an identity that is symbolic, timeless, and
archetypal, instead of giving them the freedom to craft identities that suit their
individual temperaments. . . . Instead of broadening the concept of what women
can be, feminist matriarchal thought narrows it, making femininity about as
inescapable as a pair of leg irons.43
Similar themes are promoted by other feminist scholars. For instance, in an
overview of anthropological history, Micaela di Leonardo states:
Both feminist essentialists and conservative anti-feminists have continued to draw
on the nineteenth-century storehouse of moral motherhood symbolism, stressing
womens innate identity with and nurturance of children and nature.44
The old equation tenaciously reappears: Because conservative, anti-feminist moralists
have glorified motherhood, womens nurturing abilities, and innate closeness with
nature (while keeping women in the kitchen and the bedroom), any woman who honors
the reproductive and nurturing powers within her and experiences a deep kinship with the
natural world is, therefore, assumed to be playing into regressive, patriarchal stereotypes
that will keep her in bondage. Whats the alternative? Not to honor motherhood? To
deny womens nurturing capacities and resonance with nature in order to escape a
patriarchal trap?
The personal lives of countless individuals, named by Eller as feminist
matriarchalists, have functioned for decades as multidimensional laboratories for
personal and societal transformation. These women are hardly the shrinking violets of
19th-century femininity, yet Eller conflates their individually motivated, embodied
inquiries with the simplistic stereotype of sexist femininity in which women are
assumed to be clinging to a single concept of femaleness that she associates with
impotence, restraint, and stasis.45 Eller insinuates that these feminist women are
mindlessly directing their lives according to universal claims about who women really
are, [and] what traits they will (or ought to) evidence as a result of their biological sex.46
For women who have devoted themselves to the arduous task of reclaiming personal
identity from layers of patriarchal conditioning, the imposition of such a narrow
theoretical frame discards the validity of their own experiences and achievements. How
can such an injustice serve the interests of women or of feminism?
Lamenting that being female evokes male-defined categories and continual
victimization, Eller announces: The obvious option seems to be, as feminist Denise
Riley suggests, to stand back and announce that there arent any women.47 Then, in a
sudden stroke of insight, she adds:
Defining women by the sexism that labels them does not rule out the possibility of
rehabilitating values traditionally dismissed as feminine. We can work to make
the world a place that practices compassion and nurturance, that values
relationships and the natural world.48

Cultivating these human values is what the so-called feminine matriarchalists have been
doing all along with one major difference: in Ellers scheme, male supremacy is never
challenged.
The Presence of the Goddess
For Western women, steeped in androcratic traditions that exclude deity in female forms,
the discovery of Goddess worship in multicultural contexts and the profusion of female
imagery from world prehistory came as revelation. The title of Merlin Stones 1976
volume When God was a Woman appeared as a banner headline announcing a new
consciousness that represented heresy within the Judeo-Christian context.
Women who searched for female imagery in the earliest human art found
descriptions of man the hunter as the first artist depicting animals and women as
objects of his conquests. Ice Age sculptures of nude females, found along the big game
corridor between the Pyrenees and Siberia, 30,000-10,000 before present, were named
Venuses, implying an erotic function in service to the male imagination. These
sculptures, that fit easily in the hand, are typically described as fertility fetishes, Stone
Age pornography, or mother goddesses. Such definitions conform to the notion that,
from Paleolithic times, men were engaged in cultural activities as artists, shamans, and
creators of technology, whereas women were sex objects concerned with fertility, child
bearing and primitive domesticity.
The first archaeologist to present an in-depth investigation of prehistoric
European symbolism, offering an alternative to the typical androcentric viewpoint, was
Marija Gimbutas, whose theories are targeted for dismissal in Ellers book. In Gimbutas
view, Paleolithic as well as Neolithic female sculptures were not produced for the erotic
stimulation of males, but expressed concepts of the sacred source and cyclic mystery of
life rendered in female forms, which she called Goddess. Gimbutas stressed that this
cosmogonic concept of deity was not limited to fertility or motherhood, but had multiple
functions and representations. In order to adequately study these various manifestations,
Gimbutas writes: Attention must be paid to how they are rendered, with what other
symbols they are associated, and whether their depiction extends over long ages.49
Ethnographic sources provide clues to the possible significance of miniature
female sculptures found in Ice Age contexts. For instance, in Siberia where the ice-shield
melted slowest in Eurasia, a continuity of Palaeolithic socioeconomic patterns endured in
local populations. Various Siberian peoples have long associated the natural world with
female spirits. In the mythology of the Finno-Ugrians, for instance, the earth, forests,
water, wind, and fire are believed to express the living presence of female deities. The
Siberian Evenki people traditionally keep a female sculpture in every tent, symbolizing
the spirit of a female ancestor guardian who protects the fireplace and is responsible for
the well-being and shelter of the family. The Chukchee people of the Siberian northeast
have a custom of giving a doll to the bride, symbolizing a protective female ancestor.
Moreover, in these cultures, the roles of prominent women, such as female shamans, have
been preserved.50 There is no contradiction between this evidence and Gimbutas
concept of Goddess.
Eller admits that the idea that [prehistoric imagery] had a religious or magical
function is relatively well supported. Nevertheless, she devotes an entire page of
drawings that she explains are intended to illustrate a resemblance between Paleolithic

figures. . .and contemporary pornographic images of women.51 She discusses the

vulva-finding expedition of twentieth century male archaeologists, and repeats Sally
Binfords remark that Paleolithic vulva symbolism would be right at home in any
contemporary mens room.52 In contrast, Gimbutas states:
A serious and continuous obstacle in the study of ancient societies is the indolent
assumption that they must have resembled our own. . . the existence of a
different world is the hardest thing to admit.53
Marija Gimbutas had a long and esteemed career in archaeology before she was
discovered by the Goddess movement. After establishing her reputation as a renowned
scholar of European prehistory at Harvard University, Gimbutas became Chair of
European Archaeology at University of California, Los Angeles, and was project director
of five major Neolithic sites in southeast Europe (1967-80). Her research on the earliest
agrarian cultures of southeast Europe (c. 6500-3500 BC) resulted in a pioneering study of
Neolithic symbolism. Neveretheless, Eller describes her status as peripheral,
insinuating through the press that Gimbutas built a career upon her belief in a
matriarchal past.54
While Gimbutas did not ignore the existence of male imagery (which she called
gods), she interpreted the vast majority and variation of female iconography (which she
called goddesses) as expressions of the centrality of the female in myth and ritual and
the significance of womens participation in the continuity of cultural life. While the
term Goddess is often problematic for Westerners who tend to imagine a female
version of the transcendent Father God, Gimbutas defined the Goddess as the unity of
all life in nature and the infinite powers and patterns of nature expressed through plant,
animal, and human life55oa metaphor of the powers of the living earth rendered in
myriad anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms.
Although Eller actually agrees that goddess worship is the most likely
explanation of Neolithic figurines, she also asserts: There is no warrant for. . . the
assumption that prehistoric goddess worship, insofar as it existed, conferred greater
56
respect upon women or insulated them from misogyny or subordination to men.
Anthropological research by Peggy Reeves Sanday, relegated to a footnote in Ellers text,
supports the opposite conclusion: male gods correlate with male power while goddesses
57
or mixed-sex pantheons correlate with greater status for women. Sanday asks:
Which sex is imbued (naturally or socially) with the reproductive powers that
recharge the sources of supernatural fecundity? What is the gender of the
dominant symbols tying the archetypal to the social? How do males and females
complement one another in the political arena and how is this arena tied to the
cosmological order?58
Recognizing the difficulties involved in adequately interpreting the belief systems
and social structures of prehistory, Gimbutas developed an interdisciplinary
methodology called Archaeomythology to broaden the scope of descriptive
archaeology by incorporating scholarship from ethnology, mythology, linguistics,
anthropology of religion, historical documents and other fields. Importantly, this

multidisciplinary approach provides the ability to test the validity of theories and
assumptions: if an interpretation is acceptable according to one discipline but is
invalidated by another, the interpretation must be reexamined.
One of Gimbutas assumptions is that the core beliefs of traditional societies are
typically slow to change and may be perpetuated through folklore, mythology, religion,
and social structure over many generations, even as remnants of archaic cultural
patterns.59 Applying an archaeomythological approach, Gimbutas determined that
matrilineal succession in the non-Indo-European societies of Europe and Asia
MinoroMinoan, Etruscan, Pelasgian, Lydian, Lykian, Carian, and Basque, among
othersodid not arise from patriarchal conditions, but represents substratum continuities
from earlier egalitarian, matricentric cultures where the primary deities were female.60
The worship of female deities is connected to a mother-kinship system and
ancestor worship in which the sexual identity of the head of the family and kin
formulated the sexual identity of the supreme deity. In the mother-kinship
system, woman as mother is the social center . . .venerated. . .as the progenitor of
the family and stem.61
Similar societies are well attested by ethnographic studies, such as the
Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia.
These egalitarian people, studied by Peggy Reeves Sanday for over two decades, express
many of the elements described by Gimbutas as Old European. Sanday writes that in
their tradition-based society, ultimate authority does not rest in political roles but in a
cosmological order that pivots around female oriented symbols upheld by ritual acts
coordinated by women.62 Their social structure is based not on a gendered division of
political power but on gendered divisions within the sociocultural and cosmological
orders in which males and females compliment one another. The mother/child bond is
sacred and customs associated with matrilineal descent are treated as foundational to
personal and cultural identity. All persons are connected through females to a common
ancestress who exemplifies primordial principles of conduct. Womens life-cycle
ceremonies bring members of different clans together and maternal symbols are
venerated, representing "a female ethos that emphasizes love, duty, and common
commitment to a sacred tradition.63 The Minangkabau people refer to their own culture
as matriarchal with no implication of domination by women.64
Interpretating Figurines
The symbolism of Neolithic figurines was rarely a topic for discussion before Marija
Gimbutas research on Old European symbolism began to appear. The Gods and
Goddesses of Old Europe was published in 1974, the same year as Ortners article in
Rosaldo and Lampheres anthology. The fact that Gimbutas described women at the
center of Neolithic cultures and that her work (especially The Language of the Goddess,
1989) was discovered and celebrated by the womens spirituality movement has
65
disqualified her as a true scientist in the eyes of certain critics. Gimbutas theories
struck a nerve at the center of the nature/culture debate that triggered a rising wave of
uninformed criticisms. She is typically accused, for instance, of collapsing the diversity
66
of female images under the rubric of fertility or mother goddesses. Instead of

10

considering the full range of her theories, the critics repeatedly cite each other and parrot
the same tired phrases while disregarding Gimbutas actual voice:
It is true that there are mother images and protectors of young life, and there was
a Mother Earth and Mother of the Dead, but the rest of the female images cannot
be generalized under the term Mother Goddess...They impersonate Life, Death
and Regeneration; they are more than fertility and motherhood.67
In Gimbutas view, Neolithic sculptures and related symbolism are visual
metaphors that represent the grammar and syntax of a kind of meta-language by which
an entire constellation of meanings is transmitted.68
My primary presupposition is that they can best be understood on their own
planes of reference, grouped according to their inner coherence. They constitute a
complex system in which every unit is interlocked with every other in what
appears to be specific categories . . .[of a] cohesive and persistent ideological
system.69
Gimbutas methodology is not recognized as valid by processualist archaeologists
who consider the symbolic dimensions of culture inaccessible to properly scientific
investigation,70 nor is it accepted by feminist archaeologists who have ignored the
archaeomythological basis of Gimbutas investigations.
Eller accurately states that feminist archaeologists operate out of entirely different
assumptions from Gimbutas who never entered the gender and archaeology discussion.71
In contrast to Gimbutas focus on symbolism, for instance, feminist archaeologists Ruth
Tringham and Margaret Conkey insist that prehistoric European figurines must be studied
in terms of gender ideology and the negotiations of power relations, an approach that
Eller also embraces. They are cynical about Gimbutas scenario of egalitarian, peaceful
coexistence which they see as encouraging conformity and discouraging resistance that
would challenge the authority of the Goddess.72 Tringham and Conkey prefer to imagine
competition between Neolithic households in which residents supposedly used figurines
to express and maintain symbolic autonomy. They also imagine figurines and rituals
used by senior males as a way of dominating and exploiting other groups.73 As an
explanation for the increase in figurine production, they endorse the notion that figurines
could have been created by women, as a muted group, to serve as insults as a way of
resisting male domination due to increased competition between the sexes.74
It is imperative to point out here that there is absolutely no evidence whatever of
competition between households or male domination in pre-Indo-European Neolithic
cultures. The assumption that competition and struggles for power are forever ubiquitous
is used as the primary evidence for such interpretations when no other evidence exists.
This is a prime example of presentismothe projection of contemporary conditions and
expectations onto the past.
Collision of Cultures
Major social and economic changes took place in Europe within the 4th and 3rd millennia
BC resulting in the establishment of Bronze Age societies. Gimbutas Kurgan

11

Hypothesis remains the most accepted and consistently debated explanation of these
changes, which she described as a collision of cultures resulting in radical
transformations of ideology and social structure. The sophistication of this theory is lost
when it is rendered simply as a cartoon of evil warriors on horseback sweeping through
Old Europe, destroying the good Goddess cultures. The peoples from north of the
Black Sea (Proto-Indo-European speakers whom Gimbutas named Kurgans) who began
entering Europe after 4400 BC lived in small bands and, Gimbutas writes, their
encroachment on Old Europe cannot be thought of as an organized, massive invasion of
the type we know from historical times."75 Nevertheless, when their barrow-type graves
appeared in Europe for the first time (primarily containing males with weapons), nearly
700 major habitation sites, representing a rich fabric of cultural and technological
developments, disintegrated after flourishing undisturbed for many hundreds of years.
Tellingly, Eller misrepresents a statement by archaeologist James Mallory from his
landmark book, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, to give the impression of wholesale
rejection of Gimbutas theory.76 Mallory was, in fact, reporting a minority viewpoint.
Eller intentionally omitted his primary message:
The Kurgan solution is attractive and has been accepted by many archaeologists
and linguists, in part or total. It is the solution one encounters in Encyclopedia
Britannica and the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopdique Larousse.77
According to Gimbutas theory, fundamental changes in language, economy,
social structure, and religious beliefs took place over two millennia as a result of complex
processes of external and internal influences. The stable, egalitarian, matricentric
cultures of Neolithic Europe were replaced by patriarchal patterns of dominance although
Old European patterns continued as substratum elements in subsequent European
societies. As Susan Kent comments: Culture forms an integrated whole system in which
gender is culturally constructed. If other parts of culture change, gender is also
influenced.78
Eller and other critics (even feminist archaeologists) seem squeamish about
inquiring into the origins of patriarchy and appear more comfortable imagining societies
as always male dominated. After all, if the beginning of patriarchy in Europe can be
traced to the Bronze Age, its eternal status is threatened. Eller remarks:
The very attempt to ask and answer origins questions about sexismowhich is both
matriarchal myths motivation and methodois fraught with danger . . .[leading to]
a totalizing image of patriarchy. . .[and a] nostalgia for a lost past. . .[which] is
usually escapist.79
Conkey and Tringham, who hold a similar position to Ellers, state that theories about
the origins of patriarchy become a narrative of closure which shuts down our
imaginative powers about the many ways in which people could have lived.80 Instead of
considering the veracity of the Kurgan Hypothesis on the strength of the evidence, they
simply reject it. For example, at the end of the Eneolithic (Neolithic with copper) period
in the Balkans, so many houses were burned that this period is called the Burned House
Horizon. Instead of considering the wholesale burning and abandonment of villages,

12

the disappearance of figurines, and the simultaneous appearance of Kurgan burials as

evidence of Gimbutas theory of the end of Old Europe, Ruth Tringham (who excavated
a burned house at the site of Opovo, former Yugoslavia) proposes that the inhabitants
burned their own houses upon the death of the resident patriarch.81
As Alison Wylie has indicated, our knowledge of the past is not as limited by the
fragmentary nature of our data as it is by the limitations of our epistemologies.82
Ironically, Conkey and Tringham ask: Are we, as feminists, still embedded in scientific
traditions of discourse and argument that are patriarchal, dominating and
exclusionary?83 One might suggest that the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
Conclusion
According to Cynthia Eller, the so-called matriarchal myth is based on sloppy
scholarship and wishful thinking which must be abandoned if feminists want to avoid
being accused of vacuousness and irrelevance. On the other hand, she insists that the
idea that all human cultures throughout time have probably been male dominated is the
most reasonable, scientifically sound approach to prehistory. The myth of universal
patriarchy and the myth of universal objectivity are apparently inseparable and ideology
indeed masquerades as aetiology.
Eller recognizes that a primary motivation of the so-called feminist
matriarchalists (as denizens of the ennobling lie) is to overturn patriarchy by a change
of consciousness, but she asserts that they are so misled that they can only manage to
further incarcerate themselves into self-inflicted domestic cages by playing into sexist
stereotypes. Nevertheless, Eller argues that such women are dangerous: Men have
ample reason to fear that the desire for revenge would run high if the tables were ever
turned and women took power.84
In spite of the extensive research she did for Living in the Lap of the Goddess,
Eller seems to have missed the point that womens spirituality has nothing to do with
revenge or power politics, but it is about transformation and the retrieval of inner
authority which systems of domination externalize. In so doing, the so-called
matriarchal myth does present a story that challenges the foundation of universal
patriarchy, which is akin to heresy. Eller writes, For those of us with ears to hear it, the
noise the theory of matriarchal prehistory makes as we move into a new millennium is
deafening.85 The fact is, the noise Eller refers to, is the sound of liberation from the
very myth of universal male dominance that she seeks to uphold.
While conveniently stating that she does not intend to offer an alternative account
of gender roles in prehistory, Eller nevertheless admits to being a partisan of the belief
that male dominance has been universal, at least up until now.86 She also asks:
How can women attain real power when it seems we have never had it before?
How can we hope that sex egalitarianism is possible, that male dominance can be
ended, when it has been a mark of who we are as a species from time
immemorial?87
She suggests that we comfort ourselves with the thought that male dominance may be
perpetuated through inertia and have no better reason to exist than tradition.88 However,
as Susan Kent reminds us: In patriarchal societies, men expend much energy and

13

resources to maintain their hierarchies, economic sources, purity, and status that, from
their perspective, allow them to control women.89
Let us also not forget that one of the main goals of feminism is to correct the
androcentric bias that places the interests of men above all else. On this front, Eller
contributes absolutely nothing. Instead, she adds weakly, The fact that a goaloin this
case, eradicating sexismois in principle unreachable does not mean it is not worth
pursuing with every ounce of moral fiber we can muster. All we need to do is to decide
90
what we want and set about getting it. The problem is, the belief in the universality of
male dominance acts as an internal template in which any impulse toward liberation is
dangerous. In other words, as long as one believes in the inevitability of domination, that
inevitability is replicated in the present and projected into the future and onto the past.
Eller, therefore, is proposing a safely unreachable goal while leaving the androcentric
model intact.
One way to keep from being criticized by those who hold power is to say what
they want to hear as cleverly as possible. While posing as the savior of feminism, Ellers
thesis draws strength from a wealth of anti-feminist attitudes, making her the darling of
the status quo.
Eller does make a useful distinction between an origin myth that does not require
historical veracity to be powerful, and a viable reconstruction of the past that depends
upon accurate interpretation. The question of what qualifies as reliable scholarship, or as
science, however, has yet to be universally agreed upon, especially concerning
reconstructions of prehistoric societies. Anglo-American archaeology has been mired in
philosophical debates about the dilemma of interpretation for decades and true objectivity
remains an illusion, regardless of the chosen methodology.91 All interpretations are
based upon assumptions which influence the range and direction of interpretive
possibilities. To assume, for instance (even unconsciously), that male dominance has
been a mark of who we are as a species from time immemorialoor that balanced,
peaceful societies are, by definition, utopianopromotes a biased lens that diminishes any
evidence to the contrary. In the same way, the work of Marija Gimbutas is treated to
ideological dismissals by critics who do not possess the multidisciplinary competence
that informed her scholarship. Instead of evaluating her work on its own terms, they
continue to cite each other, repeating the same false representations of her work.92
Eller has laid out an entire range of arguments that exposes fanciful elaborations
on both ends of the ideological spectrum. Her approach, however, is snide and divisive
and serves to intensify a split within feminism that has festered for three decades. In
1982, Charlene Spretnak initiated the first published debate on the nature/culture divide
in an appendix in The Politics of Womens Spirituality. It is time now to take another
step in that direction by creating an environment of mutual respect that is broad enough
to embrace our differences and encourage fruitful dialogues.
In the meantime, as Eller has stated: We still have to confront the possibility that
prehistory happened just as matriarchal myth says it did. Indeed. It is the myth of
universal patriarchy that will not give women a future.
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1

Bamberger 1974, 280. Interestingly, Bambergers article is not included in Ellers list of references.
Eller 2000, 4.
3
Ibid 5.
4
Ibid 13.
5
The first writer to use the term was E.B. Tylor in his article The Matriarchal Family System (1896).
6
Sanday 1998, 2002, xi. See Bamberger (1974, 263-4) who accepts matriarchy to mean domination of
the mother over family and society.
7
Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974, 2.
8
Sanday 2002, xi.
9
Eller 2000, 12.
10
Gttner-Abendroth 1999 defines matriarchy as in the beginning, the mothers. See discussion with
Heide Gttner-Abendroth in Marler 1998,45.
11
For a redefinition of matriarchy, see Sanday 2002, 1998, 1993.
12
For a perceptive overview of the development of feminist thought and gender studies see Gilchrist 1999,
1-16.
13
Eller 2000, 4.
14
Ibid 181.
15
Ibid 11.
2

17

16

See Bamberger 1974, 267.

See Campbell 1986, 17-18; Marler 1987. The ethnologist Adolf Bastian (1826-1905) distinguished two
mythic levels: the universal (Elementargedanken), and the local inflections, or folk ideas
(Vlkergedanken), discussed in Campbell 1986, 11.
18
Eller 2000, 8.
19
Sanday 1993, 5.
20
Arnold and Wicker 2001, vii.
21
Kent 1998, 19.
22
Kent 1999, 38.
23
Ibid, 32.
24
See, for example, Gero and Conkey 1991; di Leonardo 1991; Nelson 1997; Sweely 1999; Gilchrist 1999;
Mascia-Lees and Black 2000. For an introduction to the complexities of the subject of gender, see Oakley
1997, 29-55.
25
Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974, 3.
26
Rosaldo 1980; Nelson 1997, 116.
27
See, for instance, Gero and Conkey, 1991; Kent 1998, 1999; Nelson 1997.
28
Sanday 1981, 1993.
29
Sanday 2002.
30
Eller 2000, 180-81.
31
Ibid, 118.
32
Ibid, 77.
33
Lepowsky 1993, 283-4.
34
Kent 1999, 38-41, 45.
35
See Sanday 1993.
36
Tringham and Conkey 1998, 22. The typical use of the term essentialist, however, carries the same
negative implication as feminist matriarchalist.
37
Conkey and Spector 1984, 1-2.
38
Eller 2000, 97.
39
Ibid, 77.
40
Ortner 1974, 87.
41
See Spretnak 1991, 128.
42
Starhawk 1997, 519-20.
43
Eller 2000, 8, 68.
44
di Leonardo 1991, 26.
45
Eller 2000, 67, 65.
46
Ibid, 79.
47
Ibid, 77.
48
Ibid, 79.
49
Gimbutas 1991, 223.
50
Haarmann 2000, 8, 13.
51
Eller 2000, 137.
52
Ibid, 123.
53
Gimbutas 1991, 324.
54
Eller 2000, 90; Jernigan 2001. Gimbutas insists that her work on European prehistory was never
motivated by ideological concerns. See interview with Gimbutas in Marler 1997, 18-21.
55
Gimbutas 1991, 343.
56
Eller 2000, 139, 141, 181, 107.
57
Sanday in Eller 2000, 216, n. 38.
58
Sanday 1998, 8.
59
Eller misrepresents my quote that mythology and folklore are conservative and slow to change by
saying that any history contained within myths could be carried along intact for many generations (2000,
173). I was referring to metaphor, not literal history. The example she presents of the use of Romanian
funeral laments actually endorses, rather than disproves, the continuity of folkloric motifs. The lament in
question was performed in a traditional manner to merge the deceased persons death with an ancient
mythic theme, transforming his personal history into a larger, timeless story.
17

18

60

Gimbutas 1991, 344.

Ibid, 342.
62
Sanday 1998, 8.
63
Sanday 2002, xi-xii.
64
Other peoples considered living matriarchal societies include the Mosuo in China, near Tibet (see
Gttner-Abendroth 1999, 31-41) and the women-centered society of Juchitn, Oaxaca, Mexico, among
others.
65
See Marler 1997, 20 for an interview with Gimbutas in which she states that she was not motivated by
ideology or by the womens movement to conduct her research.
66
Conkey and Tringham 1995, 214; Beck 2000.
67
Gimbutas 1989, 316.
68
Ibid, xv.
69
Ibid.
70
Wylie 2002, 4. In an attempt to address the ideational and symbolic dimensions of prehistoric culture
neglected by processual archaeology, Renfrew and Zebrow (1994, xiii) introduced the new field of
cognitive archaeology as rooted in the scientific tradition and in an empirical methodology that seeks to
draw upon the cognitive, and the mathematical and computer sciences.
71
Eller 2000, 89.
72
Tringham and Conkey 1998, 42-43.
73
Ibid 38, 42; Conkey and Tringham 1995, 228.
74
Tringham and Conkey 1998, 42 repeating the ideas of Shirley Ardener.
75
Gimbutas 1991, 359.
76
Eller 2000, 165.
77
Mallory 1989, 185.
78
Kent 1998, 18.
79
Eller 2000, 183.
80
Conkey and Tringham, 1995, 211.
81
Tringham and Conkey 1998, 38-9. Tringham attributed the house burning to the death of the patriarch
during her presentation at the 7th Gender and Archaeology Conference, Sonoma State University, Rohnert
Park, California, Oct. 4, 2002.
82
Wylie 1991.
83
Conkey and Tringham 1995, 231.
84
Eller 2000, 178.
85
Ibid, 3.
86
Ibid, 186.
87
Ibid, 185.
88
Ibid, 187.
89
Kent 1998, 18.
90
Eller 2000, 188.
91
For a masterful overview of the history of conceptual issues in archaeology, see Wylie 2002.
92
For an overview and analysis of the criticisms of Gimbutas work, see Maguire 2002.
61

19