The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected Articles Form 1952 to 1993 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series No. 18) [Paperback]

Marija Gimbutas (Author), Miriam Robbins Dexter (Editor), Karlene Jones-Bley (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Professor Marija Gimbutas
PROFESSIONAL:
1973-74 - Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences
1966 - Curator of Old World Archaeology, Cultural History Museum, U.C.L.A.
1964-89 - Professor of European Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles
1962-63 - Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1961-62 - Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California
1955-63 - Research Fellow of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
EDITORIAL BOARDS: 1964 - Member of the Board, Metmenys, Chicago
1973 - Archaeology Editor, The Journal of Indo-European Studies
1976 - Associate Editor, Monumenta Archaeologica, Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
1979 - Member of the Board, Ponto-Baltica, Florence
1980 - Member of the Board, Comparative Civilizations Journal, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
1981 - Contributing Member, The Quarterly Review of Archaeology, Williamstown, Massachusetts
SELECTED ENGLISH LANGUAGE BIBLIOGRAPHY:
"Ancient Symbolism in Lithuanian Folk Art ". American Folklore Society, Memoir Series, Vol. 49, Philadelphia, 1958. 169 pp. with 157 illus.
"The Balts". Ancient Peoples and Places, vol. 33. Thames and Hudson: New York: Praeger, London:1963. 286 pp. 79 pls., 47 text figures, 11 maps.
Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. The Hague: Mouton, 1965. 681 pp., 115 pls., 462 text illus., index.
"The Slavs". Ancient Peoples and Places, vol. 74., London: Thames and Hudson; New York and Washington, D.C.: Praeger., 240 pp., 75 pls., 48 text illus., 15 maps.
Neolithic Macedonia 6500-5000 B.C. (editor) 1976, Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. Monumenta Archaeologica I. 470 pp., 47 pls., 60 color frames, 250 text illus., 52 tables.
"The Transformation of European and Anatolian Cultures 4500-2500 B.C. and Its Legacy". Part I: The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 8, 1-2: Part II: The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 8, 3-4: Part III: The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 9. 1-2. 1980-1980. (Editor)
The Goddess and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B.C., London: Thames and Hudson. Berkeley-Los Angeles: . . .
The Language of the Goddess: Sacred Images and Symbols of Old Europe. Introduction by Joseph Campbell. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989. c. 500 pp., 500 illustrations (with c. 2000 objects illus.).
The Civilization of the Goddess - the World of Old Europe. Edited by Joan Marler. HarperSanFrancisco.1991.
The Living Goddesses. Edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1999.
FESTSCHRIFTS
Proto-Indo-European: The Archaeology of a Linguistic Problem. Studies in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Edited by Susan Nacev
Skomal and Edgar C. Polome. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. 1987.
From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Edited by Joan Marler. Manchester, CT.:
Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, Inc. 1997.Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas. Edited by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Edgar C. Polome. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph No. 19. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. 1997.

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Institute for the Study of Man (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941694569
• ISBN-13: 978-0941694568
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Contents of Book, February 20, 2005

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Institute for the Study of Man (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected Articles Form 1952 to 1993 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series No. 18) (Paperback)

On the Origins of North Indo-Europeans; The Indo-Europeans-Archaeological Problems; The Relative Chronology of Neolithic and Chalcolithic Cultures in Eastern Europe North of the Balkan Peninsula and the Black Sea; Proto-Indo-European Culture-The Kurgan Culture During the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Millenium B.C.; Old Europe c. 7000-3500 B.C.-The Earliest European Civilization Before the Infiltration of the Indo-European Peoples; The Beginnings of the Bronze Age of Europe and the Indo-Europeans 3500-2500 B.C.; An Archeaologists View of *PIE in 1975; The First Wave of Eurasian Steppe Pastoralists into Copper Age Europe; The Three Waves of the Kurgan People into Old Europe, 4500-2500 B.C.; The Kurgan Wave #2 (c.3400-3200 B.C.) into Europe and the Following Transformation of Culture; Primary and Secondary Homeland of the Indo-Europeans, Comments on Gamkrelidze-Ivanov Articles; Remarks on the Ethnogenesis of the Indo-Europeans in Europe; Accounting for a Great Change; Review of Archaeology and Language by C. Renfrew; The Collision of Two Ideologies; The Fall and Transformation of Old Europe.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important background, December 9, 2010

By 

Christopher R. Travers "Einhverfr" (Chelan, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected Articles Form 1952 to 1993 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series No. 18) (Paperback)

One might say that Marija Gimbutas is the intellectual giant who all scholars that would trace the archaeological origins of the Indo-European speakers in Europe must confront. Her Kurgan hypothesis, despite some problems, is still at least in its broad outlines the most widely accepted theory of the arrival of Indo-European peoples in Europe. Like most pioneers, she gets many things wrong, but that's no reason to avoid her work. Instead it's worth noting that when the errors are stripped away that these works have provided the foundation on which most recent scholars build their works. Also for this same reason it's probably not the best first book to read on the topic. I'd recommend The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David Anthony instead. Anthony largely takes the Kurgan hypothesis of Gimbutas and presents an alternate and much more detail-focused approach to the dynamics of the development of the steppe-riders and their movements into Europe, India, etc.

The Kurgan hypothesis as presented by Gimbutas suffers from a number of important flaws which are worth mentioning right away. The first is that she uses the term "Kurgan" very loosely and as an umbrella term for very widespread material cultures (covering Srednij Stogg, Yamnaya, Botai-Tersek and other horizons). Gimbutas also lumps together a distinct group of cultures together as "Old Europe" again glossing over differences between them.

Moreover, Gimbutas makes a number of controversial claims about the nature of this "Old Europe" conglomeration. In particular, she suggests it is not only matrilocal and matrilineal, but also matriarchal (she says presumably the societies were presided over by a queen/priestess, and given that families tend to operate along the same structures as the state in traditional cultures, this would extend there too). This claim has been hotly contested and yet she states it over and over as if it were simple fact, ignoring those who say otherwise.

These issues having been mentioned, the book contains a load of details which one can use to supplement many newer surveys. The discussion of "Old Europe" winged vases was something I found quite interesting. Many of the articles are rather specialized, and these are worth reading in addition to newer surveys even if some details may be dated.

But more to the point, these are essays which shaped the field. Despite their flaws, they are pioneering works (and pioneering works are always flawed!) which have made the field what it is today. If you are interested in the origins of the Indo-Europeans, this is one book you will want to read.

Highly recommended.