II. Studies of historical matriarchal societies (Prehistory)

The new definition of “matriarchy” derived from anthropological-ethnological research can be applied as a scientific tool to cultural history, in this case to the history of the cultural regions in West Asia and Europe. Together with a detailed knowledge of the form of matriarchal society it is compared with the archaeological finds in order to determine whether these finds could reveal more or something different than previously assumed, which could lead to a change in perspective and interpretation.  If only the form of the patriarchal society is known, there will always be unconscious or conscious projections of patriarchal patterns back onto the cultural history, a situation that is criticized and revised by Modern Matriarchal Studies.
In recent archaeology, findings from ethnology are occasionally included to better understand early historical patterns. However, the choice is arbitrary and random, so that even patriarchalized, indigenous societies are considered in an attempt to understand certain phenomena that, nevertheless, cannot be understood in this way.  In the following section only older and more recent studies contributing to matriarchal cultural history will be mentioned, although they might not use the term and the new definition of matriarchy, as well as critical voices of male and female archaeologists regarding their own research area. These are relevant for the further development of Modern Matriarchal Theory and Studies and are being incorporated within them. At the same time, this different perspective on cultural history focuses on answering the question of the origin and spread of patriarchy and the reasons for this, which differ from one cultural area to another.