New Year Intention

Some of the conclusions from the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas are listed as follows by Starhawk in her book EarthPath: 1)that early cultures were based on cooperation; 2)that in these peaceful cultures, women held the power; and 3)that war is not inevitable!

We have been brainwashed into thinking that war is to be expected. Human imagining always precedes human achievement. Let us (once again) imagine that peace is possible. My New Year intention for all of us is that we stretch to that imagining!

http://www.belili.org/marija/aboutmarija.html

Here are Starhawk’s words on Marija Gimbutas as a pattern-thinker:

…“When Gimbutas was doing her later work, archaeology as a discipline had turned away from attempts to interpret or find meaning in ancient artifacts and had restricted itself to description. Much of the criticism of her work takes an isolated object from ancient Europe, examines it in a laser-focused lens, and concludes that one cannot “prove” that it represents a Goddess or anything else.

But Gimbutas was not looking at isolated objects; she was looking at patterns. She had an incredible breadth of knowledge and experience. She read fifteen languages and had spent decades examining archaeological reports from all over Europe, including many from Eastern Europe that most of her colleagues in the US could not read.

She examined thousands of artifacts, in museums, in the field, and in the five major excavations she directed. Her interpretations came from the patterns that emerged as themes and images and forms repeated themselves again and again and again. The evidence she amassed was of a different kind than that of her colleagues, one that did not fit the narrow definitions of the academics.”