FEMALE FIGURINES DO NOT PROVE MATRIARCHY

While we can support the feminist movement, the argument that female figurines prove the existence of matriarchy may not be seen as holding ground.

Certainly, tribal societies, onwards from about 25,000 years ago, made small, voluptuous female figurines. These figurines are thought to represent motherhood, nature, fertility, creation, destruction or the bounty of the earth.

Some believe the female figurines represented goddesses and as such prove the existence of matriarchal or female-dominated societies. The lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) did pioneering work on this thesis. She identified a large number of female figurines, mostly in Europe.

But how do we interpret their existence? Were these figurines really meant to represent goddesses? Perhaps they were made by men who in a very earthly way adored or longed for the female body. Perhaps females themselves adored the figurines and were the ones who made them. Therefore, there is no proof that the female figurines represent goddesses.

Neither can we say that these female figurines prove the existence of matriarchal societies. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that in tribal societies women and men tended to just have a simple division of labor, with women mostly collecting plant food and men mostly collecting animal food, which remains unrelated to domination by either sex.

Furthermore, agrarian societies, from over the last 10,000 years, also made female figurines although these societies are clearly patriarchal or male dominated. Male dominance arose with agriculture with men leaving the domain of hunting and pushing women out of control in the domain of plant food, although women kept working a lot in agriculture. But such patriarchal societies did not rule out the existence of female figurines, representing goddesses or not.

http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/web/gimbutas/gimbutas1.html

Courtesy: Tom Parsons, Louk Vreeswijk and Sandra Hamilton

Tribal figurine Venus of Willendorf, about 25,000 years old

Figurine 'Bird Lady' in patriarchal Egypt, about 5,500 years old