PALEOLITHIC WOMEN, FOR GENDERED LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS: ALEXANDER MARSHACK – THE ROOTS OF CIVILIZATION – REVISED AND AUGMENTED EDITION – 1991 – A REVIEW

Description

Alexander Marshack's book was first written in 1968 and published soon after. The present edition I have explored was entirely re-edited and upgraded by the author in 1991. The research, and the fieldwork, for this book, were done essentially after the Second World War at a time when new techniques and technology were emerging in archaeological research. Marshack assumed what was available and used that the best he could, and as such was able to bring Ice Age archaeology to a new level of understanding. But we must not measure what he wrote and published with the criteria and parameters we can use today in this field where technology and actual research have been speeding up so fast over the last ten or twenty years that have brought up more than the previous seventy years. Yet we have to assess Marshack’s work within the context of today’s knowledge showing not what he missed, but what he could not know, hence centering our evaluation on what he was able to do and he could have done with what he had at his disposal. What appears clearly today in the field of Paleolithic archaeology is that we need to develop two levels of analysis that were systematically missing before. The first one is linguistic. All these paleolithic paintings, engravings, and sculptures were associated with some language, to be described, to be designated and to be used in what probably was serious rituals. That language was in Europe a set of Turkic dialects that have been saved today by becoming Basque. But the next development needed today is to understand the social, and cultural position of women in this society only guided by the need to survive and the need to expand. Women were the key and center of this urgency. That's what Alexander Marshack saw and was not able to exploit, explore, understand. And that's what this book is all about.