Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (277 page)

Gibbon , Edward
(1737–94)
[Bi].

British politician and historian whose chief academic work focused on the history of Rome. His most famous publication,
Decline and fall of the Roman Empire
, appeared between 1776 and 1788 and remains a much-cited orthodox study of the Roman world and its achievements. In later life Gibbon lived in retirement in Lausanne, Switzerland.
[Bio.:
Dictionary of National Biography
, 7, 1129–35]

 
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The only monastic order to originate in England. A double order of canons and nuns founded in ad 1131 by Gilbert of Sempringham in Lincolnshire. Gilbert attempted to make his order similar to that of the Cistercians.

 
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British monk who lived during the 6th century
ad
, probably in south Wales and Brittany where he is revered as a saint. He was called by Alcuin the ‘wisest of the Britons’, and his
Fall of Britain
completed
c.
ad 540 is an important source of information about Britain during the early 6th century. Gildas died
c.
ad 571.

 
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The oldest substantial poem that has survived from antiquity, an Assyrian recension dating from the 7th century
bc
found on clay tablets in the ruins of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal at
NINEVEH
. The subject of the epic is man's conquest of his environment and his quest for the secret of immortality. The hero is Gilgamesh , the lord of Uruk, and his friend the beastman Enkidu.

 
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The application of a thin layer of gold paint or gold leaf over a base-metal, stone, plaster, wooden, or clay former or ornamental feature.

 
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Gimbutas , Marija
(1921–94)
[Bi].

Lithuanian archaeologist well known for her encyclopedic knowledge of eastern European prehistory. Born and brought up in Vilnius, she took an MA degree at Vilnius University, before travelling to Tübingen, Germany, under difficult conditions in the later years of WW2. She took her Ph.D. in Tübingen in 1946, but emigrated to the USA in 1955. Initially undertaking rather routine translation work at Harvard University she found time to research and write and soon produced important books on the archaeology of eastern Europe such as the monumental
The prehistory of Eastern Europe, vol. I: Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Copper Age cultures in Russia and the Baltic areas
(1956, Cambridge Mass.: American School of Prehistoric Research). These established her as the foremost figure in the field and in 1964 earned her a full professorship at the University of California at Los Angeles where she worked until her retirement in 1990. There followed an enormously productive period during the 1960s and 1970s with surveys and excavations in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy. She brought together linguistic and folklore evidence alongside the archaeological material, focusing increasingly on the origins of Indo-European languages and their associations with Copper Age cultures of southeastern Europe. In exploring these questions she developed a series of ideas about the existence of a European mother goddess cult which she outlined in her book
Gods and goddesses of old Europe
(1974, London: Thames and Hudson) and which has found much favour with some sections of the feminist movement although not universally accepted.
[Obit.: The
Independent
, 23 February 1994]

 
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