The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth century's most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity her original - and originally shocking - interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed through her tireless research in the field and in local texts and mythologies goddess-centered cultures that predated historic patriarchal cultures by many thousands of years. This volume which was close to completion at the time of her death, contains the distillation of Gimbutas studies combining the memorable findings of her earlier work with new discoveries, insights, and analysis.