An excellent study of the subject is The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler (a refugee from Nazism). It’s a controversial field because it gets attributed to “matriarchy”[sup][by whom?][/sup] and then gets the counter-argument that there is no evidence of any human society having been a matriarchy. Eisler’s take gets the subject out of that intellectual quagmire by showing how “matriarchy” was never the point of the pre-patriarchal era of the Goddess. Rather, it was a partnership society as opposed to a dominator society.
The concept of matriarchy simply replaces one dominator with another (to use the Latin term, a dominatrix—literally female dominator. How you feel about it in that light? :D) Eisler’s reading of Goddess prehistory removed it from any kind of domination and situated it in the egalitarian concept of partnership society.
She presents archæological evidence for this from Minoan Crete, which was one of the last survivors of prehistoric Goddess egalitarianism. There were no huge differences in real estate value between the richest and the poorest residents. Moreover, the homes and buildings of the wealthy and powerful were mixed up in the same neighborhoods with the homes of the middle-income and poor. In contrast to the heavy socioeconomic disparity, stratification, and hierarchy evident in the city planning of authoritarian/warlike/patriarchal societies. (There were also no fortification walls in Minoan Crete, although perhaps it’s been argued that the Minoan Navy was powerful enough to make them unnecessary. I dunno.)
Eisler coined the term gylany (from Greek gyne ‘woman’, lyein and lyo ‘to solve, resolve; to dissolve, set free’, andros ‘man’) for the partnership society she envisions in which men and women are really equal and neither dominates over the other. She says it’s possible for humans because we already accomplished it in prehistory. Reclaiming Witchcraft, which I’m part of, is inspired in part by this gylanic theory and functions on it in praxis. I’ve seen it work.
I didn’t know that about Crete. All you read about is the Palace, so I always assumed stratification. The Indus Valley Civilisation is egalitarian like this as well, as was the early Turkish settlements like Çatalhöyük. I know the latter also has “goddess” statues, and of course the former has its “dancing girl” and lots of other female figurines.
WhyNot—thanks for the information. I avoid witch wars. If I see one coming, I head the other way. Sorry you didn’t see the best out of my peeps wherever you’re located. All I know is, in the mid-Atlantic region, the Reclaiming folks are awesome.
MrDibble—yeah, I love all that prehistoric stuff. Göbekli Tepe, a few hundred miles east of Çatalhöyük, is a Mesolithic site with the earliest evidence of both organized religion and grain cultivation, which it seems went together. Its archæology over its 3,500 years of occupancy literally bridges the Paleolithic and Neolithic. It pushes the origins of religion and agriculture back a couple thousand years than thought earlier. The iconography of the Anatolian Mother Goddess, a woman flanked with lions, holding a frame drum, is found beginning at Göbekli Tepe, also found at Çatalhöyük, historically attested by the Hittites, and adopted by the classical Greeks and Romans as Cybele, is consistent from the Mesolithic right through to the fall of Roman Paganism. She continued as Mary, but they took away her lions and drum. She was originally the Goddess of mountains, wild places, wild beasts.
I dunno if Göbekli Tepe is good evidence for this theory. I had occasion to read a recent paper (it’s available in PDF form - Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus
on sculptures and high reliefs - from Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010) at p. 246:
You can see a picture of this image in the paper, and why it is described as “grafitti”. It is crudely scratched, quite different in style to the other icons at the site (all, insofar as can be identified, male).
This isn’t to say that the archaeology disproves that their society was egalitarian (relatively). At nearby sites, as the authors explain, clay figurines are equally male and female:
The notion that this site represents a continuity of a single goddess iconography over thousands of years is highly speculative at best.
The problem here is that the evidence is enegmatic. Firm conclusions should not be drawn from it.
The identical goddess Cybele is attested from Hittite times until the end of Roman Paganism. That’s over 2,000 years of documentation. As for pre-literate cultures: The woman flanked by lions was found at Çatalhöyük predating the Hittites by some 5,000 years. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions. Thanks for citing the examples from Nevalı Çori. Good call.
