abstract:Marija Gimbutas (; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994), was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe" and for her widely accepted Kurgan hypothesis, which located the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic Steppe. Gimbutas's assertion that Neolithic sites in Lithuania and across Europe provided evidence for matriarchal pre-Indo-European societies was not well received in scholarly circles, but became a keystone of the Goddess movement.