Matriarchy

Matriarchal Pre- and Early History

The question of matriarchal prehistory is especially associated with the Swiss jurist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887). In 1861he published Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right),in which he proposed a theory of social evolution as a development from an era in which women were defenseless and degraded, followed by an era with mother-right and perfected in classical times with the rise of men and the “male principle.” Bachofen, who actually never used the term matriarchybut gynaecocracy, revived the story of women-dominated societies in prehistory from classical Greek sources. The existence of matriarchies was explained by the assumption that some primitive peoples did not grasp the link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. They therefore had no clear notion of paternity. When men discovered paternity, according to this hypothesis, they claimed the power to monopolize women and began to claim children as their own offspring. Hence, in19th-century anthropology, women-dominated societies were regarded as a primitive stage of human evolution and patriarchy as an evolutionary advance. Bachofen was joined in this account by pioneers of the new discipline of anthropology along evolutionary lines (including Herbert Spencer). Socialists (e.g., Friedrich Engels) [Page 1554]and feminists (e.g., Charlotte Perkins Gilman)of these times were also attracted by the theory of prehistoric societies in which women dominated.

However, in the early 1970s, as part of second-wave feminism a feminist understanding of matriarchal prehistory came to be articulated. In this new tradition, matriarchal refers to women-centeredness, which does not deny equal power to men. This new feminist understanding of matriarchy is heavily indebted to archaeological finds that19th-century scholars knew nothing about. Elizabeth Fisher, for example, used the early Neolithic site of Catalhöyük(located in present-day Turkey) to illustrate patriarchy's gradual encroachment into human society. Other scholars refer to the work of the Lithuanian/American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, who argued for a widespread matriarchal (in the sense of woman-centered)culture in pre-IndōEuropean Old Europe of the Neolithic. In excavations in southeastern Europe, she uncovered a wealth of female figurines, which she identified as goddesses. Gimbutas's work is taken by some as proof of the claim that prehistoric societies were woman centered and goddess worshipping. However, some historians claim that this “evidence” is not reliable enough to allow for any conclusions. Nevertheless, women's status, role, and living conditions in prehistory and early history form a wide field of investigation in feminist and gender-sensitive anthropology, with new insights to be expected.

...