“Searching for Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ancestors in Italy”
Luciana Percovich with Elvira Visciola
Thursday, February 9, 2023 at NOON Eastern Time
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My presentation is an introduction to a women’s research project about a neglected sector of archaeological and palethnological studies in Italy during the long Pleistocenic millennia of ice and immediately after, before the coming of the Indo-European peoples, known as the Italici.
Pioneer paleontologist Luigi Pigorini (1842-1925), who was the first in Italy to teach paletnology and to inaugurate a prehistoric and ethnographic museum, determined that a Paleolithic archaeological layer didn’t exist in Italy– even if the most remote traces of human presence go back 750.000 years (homo aesernensis Isernia, Molise).
For a long time, Pigorini’s prejudice reflected and affected the Academy, and excavations rarely reached the primary layers on which Etruscan, Greek, Latin and Christian monuments have been erected. But today, one of the most renowned of Italian goddess figurines, the Lady of Savignano (Upper Paleolithic), is displayed in the Roman museum named after him.
Honoring Marija Gimbutas’ centenary, we inaugurated www.preistoriainitalia.it, a free association of scholars of various disciplines, indipendent researchers and artists disseminated all over the Italian regions. Our goals are to collect and give a vision to myriad discoveries and manufacts preserved in small local museums and in variegated specialistic reviews and bulletins.
The presentation is based on the current state of this groundbreaking research, which is proving rich beyond expectations. The work is largely supported by images and divided into 5 topics: Caves, Ancestresses, Burials, Goddess figurines, and findings in Sardinia/Sicily.
Luciana Percovich The Encyclopedia of Women describes her as “a traveller between worlds and a weaver of space-time connections for her ability of embracing distant wide horizons with a loving insight.” A member of the Italian Women’s Movement since the Seventies, she has lived and worked in Milano as a teacher, an editor, a translator, activist and an author. She has introduced, and made their books available to Italian readers, the works of important feminist authors including Mary Daly, Marija Gimbutas, Vicki Noble, Tsultrim Allione, Starhawk, Genevieve Vaughan, Phyllis Currott, Kathy Jones, Heide Goettner-Abendroth among others. As an essayist she has published widely on such topics as women’s health, science, anthropology and mythology. With the Laima Association, she helped to organize the International Indigenous Cultures of Peace conferences in Torino and Rome. She is a member of the Libera Università delle Donne di Milano.
Luciana’s main publications include La coscienza nel corpo. Donne, salute e medicina negli anni Settanta; Oscure Madri Splendenti. Le origini dl sacro e delle religion; Colei che dà la vita, Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili; and Verso il Luogo delle Origini. Un percorso di ricerca del sé femminile.
Her E-book is available in English: She who gives Life, She who gives Form. Female creation myths.
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Save the date for the next ASWM Salon:
February 23, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time
The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions
Kaarina Kailo
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
During thirty years of annual visits cooking with, living with, and talking with women who offer pongala, she found the answers for herself in the largest annual women’s ritual in the world and the themes of: the essential equality of all people and religions, the necessity to share life-sustaining resources, the inherent power of women who demand justice, the emotional support offered by women’s community, and the recognition of immanent divinity in each girl and woman.
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