Episode 37

Lady Statues and Prehistoric Matriarchy

Kick off Women's History Month with a show all about some of the earliest representations of women in art! Anna introduces us to the Venus of Willendorf and her curvy comrades, and shares a research study with very modern take on ancient art. Meanwhile Amber bursts our bubble about the matriarchy and goddess religions in Old Europe, and discusses goddess worshippers of past and present at Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey. Or, as Amber would insist we call it this month, Her-key.

The Time of the Willendorf Figurines and New Results of Palaeolithic Research in Lower Austria (Anthropologie)

The Oxford Companion to Archaeology (via Google Books)

Venus Figurines of the European Paleolithic: Symbols of Fertility or Attractiveness? (Journal of Anthropology)

Das Mutterrecht (auf Deutsch via Archive.org, English translation WorldCat entry here)

The Marija Gimbutas Collection (Opus Archives and Research Center)

The World of the Goddess - Marija Gimbutas (Youtube)

The Myth of the Mother-Goddess (World Archaeology)

Goddesses, Gimbutas and New Age archaeology (Antiquity)

Catal-huyuk: A Neolithic Town (via Archive.org)

Archaeologists and Goddess Feminists at Çatalhöyük: An Experiment in Multivocality (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion)

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.