The Living Goddesses

Before her death from cancer in 1994, the pioneering archeologist Marija Gimbutas had nearly completed this book, a distillation of her life's work. After decades of scholarly research that shaped much of the field of pre-Indo-European archeology (7000-3000 B.C.), Gimbutas produced two copiously illustrated, oversized books accessible to a nonscientific audience, The Language of the Goddess and The Civilization of the Goddess. This final, smaller work illuminates the continuity between scores of religious symbols from the cultural flowering of Neolithic Old Europe in the fifth millennium B.C. to European folk cultures of the modern era. The first part concisely presents Gimbutas's discoveries and observations about imagery of goddesses and gods, symbols and signs, sacred script, temples, burial practices and social structure in Old Europe before 4400 B.C., and reveals the sophisticated degree of abstraction and artistry in the expression of the Old European cyclical sense of birth, maturation, death and regeneration. The second part traces the adaptations of these Old European elements into subsequent religious systems from the late Neolithic era to our own century. As in her previous work, Gimbutas's aesthetic and spiritual sensitivity adds a depth unusual in archeological writing. This book is a major contribution to cultural history, especially the history of religion; clearly no one but Gimbutas could have produced this masterful contribution to the archeomythology of Europe. Although Part One is generously illustrated with ink drawings of excavated artifacts, none appear in Part Two, as they had not been assembled before Gimbutas's death. Miriam Robbins Dexter, who edited the book, has added a helpful introduction plus a summary at the end of each chapter. (Apr.)