The case of the missing goddess: Plurality, power, and prejudice in reconstructions of Malta's neolithic past

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 25-43

  Rountree, Kathryn ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949800219     PISSN: 87554178     EISSN: 15533913     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, ed. M. Robbins Dexter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 93, 98
2. Buffie Johnson, Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988), 25, 63
3. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (Harmondsworth, England: Viking Arkana, 1991), 101
4. The film Goddess Remembered, directed by Donna Read, came out in 1989 as a Studio D Production of the National Film Board of Canada, and is distributed by Educational Media, Australia
5. See D. H. Trump, "Megalithic Architecture in Malta," in The Megalithic Monuments of Western Europe, ed. Colin Renfrew (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), 64-76
6. and D. H. Trump, Malta: An Archaeological Guide (Valletta, Malta: Progress Press, 1990)
7. See Kathryn Rountree, "Goddess Pilgrims as Tourists: Inscribing the Body through Sacred Travel," Sociology of Religion 63, no. 4 (winter 2002): 475-96
8. Numerous scholars have engaged with these issues. See, for example, Asphodel Long, "The One or the Many: The Great Goddess Revisited," Feminist Theology 15 (1997): 13-29
9. Shelby Brown, "Feminist Research in Archaeology: What Does It Mean? Why Is It Taking So Long?" in Feminist Theory and the Classics, ed. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 238-71
10. Lynn Meskell, "Goddesses, Gimbutas, and 'New Age' Archaeology," Antiquity 69 (1995): 74-86
11. Lynn Meskell, "Twin Peaks. The Archaeologies of Çatalhö yük," in Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence, ed. Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 46-62
12. Lynn Meskell, "Feminism, Paganism, Pluralism," in Archaeology and Folklore, ed. Amy Gazin-Schwartz and Cornelius Holtorf (London: Routledge, 1999), 83-89
13. Margaret W. Conkey and Ruth E. Tringham, "Archaeology and the Goddess: Exploring the Contours of Feminist Archaeology," in Feminisms in the Academy, ed. Domna C. Stanton and Abigail J. Stewart (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 199-247
14. Ruth E. Tringham and Margaret W. Conkey, "Rethinking Figurines: A Critical View from Archaeology of Gimbutas, the 'Goddess,' and Popular Culture," in Goodison and Morris, Ancient Goddesses, 22-45
15. and Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon, 2000)
16. See Kathryn Rountree, "Re-inventing Malta's Neolithic Temples: Contemporary Interpretations and Agendas," History and Anthropology 13, no. 1 (2002): 31-51
17. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xvi
18. See Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2001), xvii
19. Meskell, "Feminism, Paganism, Pluralism," 83
20. Ian Hodder, "The Past as Passion and Play: Çatalhö yük as a Site of Conflict in the Construction of Multiple Pasts," in Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics, and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, ed. Lynn Meskell (London: Routledge, 1998), 124-39. I discussed these issues with Ian Hodder at Çatalhöyük in 2002 and have been invited to work with the research team as one of the anthropologists studying the construction of knowledge at the site
21. See Ian Hodder, "Developing a Reflexive Method in Archaeology," in Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at Çatalhö yük, British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara monograph no. 28 (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000), 3-14
22. Hodder, "Developing a Reflexive Method," 5
23. See Joseph Bezzina, Forty Legends from Gozo: Stories of Bygone Times (Valletta, Malta: Bugelli, 1991), 9
24. and Veronica Veen, Female Images of Malta (Haarlem, Netherlands: Inanna, 1994), 9
25. In Goddess discourse this figure is frequently referred to as a priestess rather than a Goddess. It is thought that the priestess is engaged in the ritual of incubating a prophetic dream. This view has also been expressed by archaeologists. See Anthony Bonanno, Malta: An Archaeological Paradise (Valletta, Malta: M.J. Publications, 1987), 19
26. and Trump, Malta, 66
27. John Evans, Malta (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959), 148
28. John Evans, "What Went On in a Maltese Megalithic 'Temple'?" in Maltese Prehistoric Art, 5000-2500 BC, ed. Anthony Pace (Valletta, Malta: Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti in association with the National Museum of Archaeology, 1996), 44
29. Colin Renfrew's paper was published as "The Prehistoric Maltese Achievement and Its Interpretation," in Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Anthony Bonanno (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner, 1986); quotation on p. 126
30. Reuben Grima, "Waking Up to the Sleeping Lady," Malta Archaeological Review 3 (1999): 3-7
31. Evans, "What Went On?" 44
32. James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture," in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 226
33. Anthony Bonanno, "The Artist in Prehistoric Religious Ritual: Servant or Master?" in Pace, Maltese Prehistoric Art, 53-58
34. Evans, "What Went On?" 39-44
35. Cristina Biaggi, "The Priestess Figure of Malta," in The Meanings of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression, ed. Ian Hodder (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 103-21
36. Evans, Malta, 145
37. Biaggi, "The Priestess Figure of Malta," 109
38. The figurine is shown without the reconstructed chest in Bonanno, "The Artist in Prehistoric Religious Ritual," 58. However, in Bonanno's book Malta, which was produced for a tourist market, the figurine still has its flat chest (p. 42), and we are told that "the hieratic pose and wig-like hair-style, as well as the difference in style and concept from the usual 'fat' figures, suggest a representation of a priest."
39. Caroline Malone and Simon Stoddart, "Representations of Death: Discoveries at the Xaghra Stone Circle, Gozo," in Pace, Maltese Prehistoric Art, 45-51
40. There are, for example, many illustrations of and references to the Maltese material in Gimbutas's The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). It should be noted that the Goddess movement does not conceptualize fertility in limited terms to refer only to the reproduction of life. Fertility is regarded as a much broader concept, as the principle of creativity and transformation in the universe. Gimbutas, Carol P. Christ, Baring and Cashford, and many others have made this point
41. See Caroline Malone, "God or Goddess: The Temple Art of Ancient Malta," in Goodison and Morris, Ancient Goddesses, 148-63
42. Anthony Bonanno, preface to Archaeology and Fertility Cult, v. Two people who were at the conference told me that this debate was very emotionally heated
43. See Brown, "Feminist Research in Archaeology," for a review of responses to Gimbutas. See also Conkey and Tringham, "Archaeology and the Goddess"; Tringham and Conkey, "Rethinking Figurines"; Meskell, "Goddesses"; Long, "The One or the Many"; and Naomi Hamilton, "The Personal Is Political," Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6, no. 2 (1996): 282-85
44. Of course there are also scholars from a wide number of fields, including archaeology, who thoroughly applaud Gimbutas's work. Many have published papers in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas, ed. Joan Marler (Manchester, Conn.: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, 1997)
45. Brown, "Feminist Research in Archaeology," 238
46. Hamilton, "The Personal Is Political," 284
47. Meskell, "Goddesses," 74
48. Bonanno, Malta, 8