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Marija Gimbutas () was a brilliant scholar with an incisive mind, the tenacity to pursue her studies despite difficult circumstances, and the courage to challenge much of the conventional thinking of her time. She was raised in Lithuania in a highly educated, cultured, and politically active family.

Biography channel jackie robinson Marija Gimbutas, an author and archeologist, died Wednesday at U. Hospital in Los Angeles. She was 73 and had lived in Los Angeles. The cause was cancer, said a colleague, Dr. Cristina Biaggi.

As a teenager, she collected folksongs of her homeland and studied Lithuanian beliefs and prehistoric rituals of death. After graduating with honors from Ausra Gymnasium (high school), she attended Vytautas Magnus University, where she studied linguistics. She subsequently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Vilnius where she studied archaeology, ethnology, folklore, linguistics, and literature.

She married Jurgis Gimbutas, an engineer, when she was 20, and a year later completed a master's thesis on the topic “Modes of Burial in Lithuania in the Iron Age.” She was awarded her Master's Degree in

During World War Two, the Gimbutas family lived in Lithuania under first Soviet () and then Nazi () occupation. After Marija's first daughter was born in , the family fled to Vienna and then to Innsbruck and Bavaria.

Soon after the war ended she enrolled at Tubingen University in the French occupation zone, and in she was awarded a doctorate in archaeology with minors in ethnology and the history of religion. Her dissertation, “Burials in Lithuania in Prehistoric Times,” was published later that year. She had a second daughter the following year, and continued with her post-graduate studies in Heidelberg and in Munich, from to

Marija and her family emigrated in to Boston, Massachusetts, where for a time she worked menial jobs before beginning her work at Harvard University in At this point in her career, she had already published nearly 40 scholarly articles on Lithuanian prehistory and other subjects, and she had completed the research for a book on the symbolism of Lithuanian folk art (published in ).

Marija's third daughter was born in , and the next year she was named a Research Fellow of Harvard's Peabody Museum. She is said to have described the Peabody as the best library in the world for archaeology. It was there that she began to receive funding in the form of fellowships and prestigious awards to further her research into Eastern European archaeology, eventually earning a reputation as a world-class specialist on the Indo-European Bronze Age, Lithuanian folk art, and the prehistory of the Balts and Slavs.

Her book, Prehistory of Eastern Europe was published in This monograph is the first summary ever to be published of all of the archaeological research on the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age cultures of Eastern Europe up to This material was previously unavailable to Western scholars due to political and linguistic barriers.

Marija was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (), during which time she completed work on Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (). She was a Professor of European Archaeology and Indo-European Studies at UCLA from to During this time she taught, researched, wrote numerous articles, and presented her work at international conferences and symposia.

In addition, she directed major excavations of Neolithic sites in southeastern Europe.

In Marija published The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe (republished in as The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, since most of the imagery is female).

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Her mother received a doctorate in ophthalmology at the University of Berlin in , while her father received his medical degree from the University of Tartu in After Lithuania regained independence in , Gimbutas's parents organized the Lithuanian Association of Sanitary Aid which founded the first Lithuanian hospital in the capital. In , Gimbutas settled with her parents in Kaunas , the temporary capital of Lithuania. After her parents separated that year, she lived with her mother and brother, Vytautas, in Kaunas. Five years later, her father died suddenly.

Most of the Neolithic sculptures in these texts were introduced to Western audiences for the first time. Among traditional archaeologists, it was common to dismiss these artifacts, largely comprised of female figurines, as being of minimal significance, and to refer to them merely as “fertility symbols.” Over years of study, however, Marija amassed an extensive and carefully catalogued collection of these artifacts which became the foundation for her later research and writings.

Evidence from Neolithic habitation sites indicated that the settlements being excavated had been agrarian, peaceful, and egalitarian. Communities of up to 10, people cultivated the land, often along riverbeds, and coexisted apparently without fighting; no weapons were found and images did not depict conflict.

The people crafted beautifully adorned fired-clay vessels, portable altars and other ritual artifacts, and produced a multitude of small female figurines, some with animal masks. Many of the houses contained an altar with clay figurines arranged upon it, suggesting a culture in which honoring the life-giving powers of a Mother Goddess and Mother Earth was a part of everyday life.

This apparent reverence for Earth goddesses would have been in accord with Neolithic excavations revealing that the people of the Neolithic age frequently shaped their communal places of worship - such as henges, stone circles, labyrinths, and communal burial mounds - to resemble female forms.

In , The Language of the Goddess was published, which focused on Marija's interpretation of Neolithic symbolism.

Marija gimbutas biography channel Born in Lithuania to prominent parents, Marija Gimbutas developed a passion for archaeology and indo-europeanism from an early age. Moving to the United States in , Gimbutas became an influential figure in the field of archaeology. Her novel approach combined archaeological research with linguistic analysis, leading to significant contributions to the understanding of ancient Indo-European peoples, particularly the Slavs. In , Gimbutas's revolutionary "Kurgan Hypothesis" transformed the study of Indo-European origins. While her early work remains widely respected, Gimbutas's later writings sparked controversy.

By this time, Marija had achieved considerable renown reinterpreting European prehistory in light of her interdisciplinary background in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions, as well as archaeology. Her thinking challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization. She traveled widely, lecturing and engaging in a vigorous exchange of ideas with colleagues in many countries.

Marija's commitment to an interdisciplinary approach led to the development of the field she named "archaeomythology".

Her magnum opus, The Civilization of the Goddess, was published in , and offered a summary of her life's work on Old European cultures, the religion of the Goddess, the Sacred Script, Old European social structure, and the end of Old Europe.

Drawing on her extensive research, Marija concluded that these peaceful, female-centered, agrarian “Old European” cultures were eventually overrun by horseback-riding nomads from the Russian Steppes over a period of two thousand years.

She identified these newcomers as "Kurgans" who were proto-Indo-European speakers.

Signs Out of Time: The Story of Marija Gimbutas

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In contrast to the Old European cultures, the invading nomads were warlike, hierarchical, and worshipped sky gods, and their incursions both subjugated and dispersed the long-lived Old European civilzation.

Based on an interdisciplinary synthesis of archaeology and linguistics, Marija proposed that the origin of Indo-European languages and Indo-Europeanized societies resulted from a struggle between two paradigms, one male-dominated, hierarchical, and warlike, and the other female-centered, egalitarian, and peaceable.

She commented in an interview, “You study Indo-European mythology and Earth Goddess is there everywhere. She was inherited, probably, from the earlier religion.”

As a teacher, Marija actively encouraged students and colleagues from a variety of fields to examine problems in European prehistory with an inclusive and interdisciplinary point of view. She stressed the importance of investigating the enormous changes in beliefs, rituals, and social structure that took place between and BCE, in order to more fully understand subsequent European cultural development.

In her view, this was one of the most complex and least understood periods in prehistory.

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She organized two international conferences on “The Transformation of European and Anatolian Culture, BC, and its Legacy,” one in and one in , and emphasized that archaeologists, linguists, mythologists, physical anthropologists, and ancient historians must collaborate and exchange information in order to further a better understanding of Old European and Indo-European history.

Today there are many web sites where you can find more detailed information about Marija’s life, her research and writing, and her thinking.

Not everyone agrees with her views or her conclusions, but few contest her brilliant scholarship or the importance of the questions her research raises about the roots of western civilization. Here are some sites we recommend:


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The image on our banner (top of page) depicts the interior of a Karanovo dish from Bulgaria, c. BC. Source: Figure , page , The Language of the Goddess, by Marija Gimbutas. Joan Marler, ed. New York: Harper & Row, ; used with permission.
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