Archaeomythology Spring 2007

Teacher: Vicki Noble

Motherpeace Tarot

This course is an investigation of the meanings and usages of “archaeomythology,” a word coined to describe the brilliant interdisciplinary methodology developed by Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas whose revolutionary work brought to light the Goddess civilizations of Old Europe. We honor Marija Gimbutas’s work as the basis for better understanding Western prehistory and history, including especially the much-overlooked fact of a transition that took place from “matristic” or matriarchal culture to patriarchy (male-dominance). Rather than staying with the obsolete (but entrenched) notion that modern civilization developed in a linear way since the Stone Age (“progress”), Gimbutas discovered and documented the distinct changes that occurred as a response to invasions, migrations, and assimilations between two different cultural approaches to social organization. This “collision of cultures” can be seen consistently in the archaeological strata of the various sites, as well as the art forms and folk traditions that have continued as a “substratum” underneath the foreground patriarchal culture in Europe since the transition occurred.