Keller also portrays archaeologists as rejecting Gimbutas' model of a Bronze Age, war-like, patriarchal Indo-European culture which invaded Old Europe. Yet, up until Renfrew's proposed alternative model of a Neolithic Indo-European expansion, Gimbutas' model was, and may still be, the most widely accepted one. The relative merits of the two models are still being actively debated as is normal in scientific inquiry. Similarly, archaeologists have not generally been blinded by their cultural values of an "exclusively male-centered concept of divinity." The great goddesses of Sumerian city states, such as Inanna, and the very prominent role of goddesses in Minoan Crete and other Neolithic cultures have long been recognized by leading scholars such as Noah Kramer, Arthur Evans, and James Mellaart. Keller similarly misrepresents archaeologists' views on the origin of European civilization and seem to misunderstand the technical definition of this term (equivalent to a state with at least three levels of political hierarchy). She is also oblivious to any notion of incremental cultural evolution involving complexity, inequality, and political control through tribal, chiefdom and state levels.

In a broader context, she characterizes scientists, including archaeologists, as divorced from the use of intuition. This, too, is patently erroneous as any reading of the great physicists' ideas on nature and reality clearly shows (see especially Wilber 1984, a book of essays by the leading physicists of this century). As in the preceding examples, Keller seems to be misrepresenting archaeology as a discipline so that she can sustain her thesis that Gimbutas' ideas about the existence of Neolithic matrifocal societies have not gained any acceptance because of the narrow, conspiratorial attitudes of archaeologists (and scientists in general) rather than the actual merits of Gimbutas' ideas. This is a ploy which simply cannot be sustained in this case. What the great thinkers of science do maintain is that before accepting ideas or statements about the world as reliable or true, whether they derive from intuition, logic, or other sources, they must undergo rigorous reality testing. Without such a step, no real progress in understanding can be made. Remains from the past constitute our primary means of testing our ideas about the past So, let us see how Gimbutas' notions stack up against the physical remains .

Archaeological Evidence Accepting Gimbutas' interpretations at face value, Keller makes a number of claims about Old European Neolithic society, and by extension, the Near Eastern Neolithic culture from which it was derived. Keller claims there is no evidence of war (no fortifications, no weapon caches), no warrior or father gods, no evidence of hierarchies or dominant males, but abundant evidence for goddess worship and artistic creations. Such an assessment has been contested by numerous archaeologists of both sexes and diverse theoretical schools (see the articles cited by Keller as well as Anthony's critiques [1995] and Hutton's overview [1991]). The major critiques have been about Gimbutas' slipshod and highly subjective analyses and her tendency to ignore or blatantly manipulate data that does not conform to her ideas.

Gimbutas claims to have identified 30,000 goddess representations from southeastern Europe, yet this data has never been presented in any form remotely like a full analysis and many of the examples that she does illustrate are of indeterminate sex or portray a wide range of animals and symbols that Gimbutas assumes to represent a universal goddess. These symbols encompass a wide range of phenomena, including: oblique parallel lines, horizontal parallel lines, vertical parallel lines, chevrons, lozenges, zigzags, wavy lines, meanders, circles, ovals, spirals, dots, crescents, U's, crosses, swirls, caterpillars, double axes, chrysalises, horns butterflies, birds, eggs, fish, rain, cows, dogs, does, stags, snakes, toads, turtles, hedgehogs, bees, bulls, bears, goats, pigs, pillars, and sexless linear or masked figures. One wonders what is left Over 10 years ago, I drew attention to this deficiency in methodology (Hayden 1986) and to the fact that at least some of these forms are more generally associated with male deities (pillars, stags, bulls, snakes). Given this poor quality foundation of the basic data, it is difficult to take Gimbutas' subsequent claims very seriously.

Moreover, in adhering to her idee fixe approach to the archaeological data in order to prove her ideas about goddess dominated cultures, Gimbutas completely ignores the overwhelming importance of the bull as the main masculine element in Neolithic religion - a role acknowledged by most archaeologists. Phalluses also constitute an abundant Neolithic type of ritual artifact that has been generally ignored by most prehistorians (Hutton 1991:42). As well, representations of bulls are probably far more common than of goddesses, and bull representations are sometimes prominently juxtaposed with goddess representations such as those in the Neolithic shrines of Catal Huyuk and in Minoan buildings. Cauvin (1994: 166, 176), in his thorough synthesis of the Neolithic expansion from the Near East has even termed the Neolithic the "People of the Bull" culture. According to Cauvin, the bull is the major ideological theme in this culture, although goddess figures are also prominent He notes that the wild bull was a terrifying animal for prehistoric people, an animal that symbolized brute instinctual force, violence, great power, great virility, and great ferociousness. As the dominant ideological symbol of the Neolithic, the bull represented the antithesis of a peacefully sedentary society or one in harmonious equilibrium. The bull was later explicitly associated with Near Eastern solar images such as the Bull of Heaven, and this association probably existed in Neolithic times. Cauvin thinks that the bull was revered by the expanding Neolithic ' peoples as a supernatural warrior patron similar to the eagle and jaguar patrons of Aztec warriors. Cauvin argues that the bull, therefore, seem to have established the tradition of warrior sky-god dominated pantheons long before the advent of the Bronze Age warrior gods like Zeus, who, incidentally, also took the form of a bull.

What other evidence exists to support Cauvin's views of the Neolithic? First of all, he notes that the very fact that Near Eastern Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) culture expanded at the rate of one kilometer per year from the Near East to the farthest reaches of Europe is a strong indication by itself that Neolithic cultures were not peaceful, especially since the indigenous cultures were generally replaced rather than assimilated. It is naive to think that all the cultures in this expansion area would politely vacate their traditional lands upon request of foreigners.

Secondly, there is a strong emphasis on prestige items including carefully made arrowheads that proliferate to a far greater extent than might be expected in stock raising societies versus those that hunt wild game. This indicates that arrows were being used for war and that war was a prestige activity (Cauvin 1994:168). Similar observations have been made in western and northern Europe (Keeley 1997: 309).