Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.