- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- Abbreviations
- [UNTITLED]
- Introduction
- I Women in Classical Athens—Their Social Space: Ideal and Reality<sup>†</sup>
- 2 Ideology and “the Status of Women” in Ancient Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 3 The Athenian Woman
- 4 The Sociology of Prostitution in Antiquity in the Context of Pagan and Christian Writings
- 5 Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour
- 6 The Social Body and the Sexual Body<sup>†</sup>
- 7 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens<sup>†</sup>
- 8 Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality<sup>†</sup>
- 9 The Cultural Construct of the Female Body in Classical Greek Science<sup>†</sup>
- 10 Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools<sup>†</sup>
- 11 Representations of Male-to-Female Lovemaking<sup>†</sup>
- 12 Women's Life in Oriental Seclusion? On the History and Use of a Topos<sup>†</sup>
- 13 The Attitudes of the Polis to Childbirth: Putting Women into the Grid<sup>†</sup>
- 14 Archaeology and Gender Ideologies in Early Archaic Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 15 Concealing/Revealing: Gender and the Play of Meaning in the Monuments of Augustan Rome<sup>†</sup>
- 16 Satyrs in the Women's Quarters<sup>†</sup>
- 17 A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory<sup>†</sup>
- 18 The Asexuality of Dionysus<sup>†</sup>
- 19 “Vested Interests” in Plautus' Casina: Cross-Dressing in Roman Comedy<sup>†</sup>
- 20 The Hippocratic “Airs, Waters, Places” on Cross-Dressing Eunuchs: “Natural” yet also “Divine”<sup>†</sup>
- Intellectual Chronology
- Further Reading
- Bibliography
- Index
A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory†
A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory†
- Chapter:
- (p.307) 17 A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory†
- Source:
- Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome
- Author(s):
Lauren E. Talalay
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
Although women's roles in prehistory have been the subject of debate for well over a century, interest in gender ideology has emerged in the archaeological literature only within the last decade. Much of the recent work on these early representations has either revived the nineteenth-century notion that, in early societies, power was initially vested in women, or has sidestepped the issue of gender and women altogether. A well-constructed approach to these figurines that incorporates feminist and/or gender ideologies and sound archaeological arguments has yet to be designed. Some well-known works argue that the abundance of female figurines in prehistoric contexts of Greece and southeastern Europe reflects an early, pan-Mediterranean belief in a Great Mother Goddess, a matriarchal social structure, and a time when women ruled either supreme or at least in partnership with men. In order to better understand the interrelationships among gender studies, prehistoric figurines and the Great Goddess theory, this chapter examines the interpretive history of Greek Neolithic figurines.
Keywords: Greece, prehistory, women, gender ideologies, power, figurines, Great Mother Goddess, Neolithic
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- Abbreviations
- [UNTITLED]
- Introduction
- I Women in Classical Athens—Their Social Space: Ideal and Reality<sup>†</sup>
- 2 Ideology and “the Status of Women” in Ancient Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 3 The Athenian Woman
- 4 The Sociology of Prostitution in Antiquity in the Context of Pagan and Christian Writings
- 5 Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behaviour
- 6 The Social Body and the Sexual Body<sup>†</sup>
- 7 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens<sup>†</sup>
- 8 Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality<sup>†</sup>
- 9 The Cultural Construct of the Female Body in Classical Greek Science<sup>†</sup>
- 10 Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools<sup>†</sup>
- 11 Representations of Male-to-Female Lovemaking<sup>†</sup>
- 12 Women's Life in Oriental Seclusion? On the History and Use of a Topos<sup>†</sup>
- 13 The Attitudes of the Polis to Childbirth: Putting Women into the Grid<sup>†</sup>
- 14 Archaeology and Gender Ideologies in Early Archaic Greece<sup>†</sup>
- 15 Concealing/Revealing: Gender and the Play of Meaning in the Monuments of Augustan Rome<sup>†</sup>
- 16 Satyrs in the Women's Quarters<sup>†</sup>
- 17 A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory<sup>†</sup>
- 18 The Asexuality of Dionysus<sup>†</sup>
- 19 “Vested Interests” in Plautus' Casina: Cross-Dressing in Roman Comedy<sup>†</sup>
- 20 The Hippocratic “Airs, Waters, Places” on Cross-Dressing Eunuchs: “Natural” yet also “Divine”<sup>†</sup>
- Intellectual Chronology
- Further Reading
- Bibliography
- Index