Primitive Communism Is Not What It Used to Be

Christophe Darmangeat, Ph. D. (1965), Université Paris Cité, is associate professor in social anthropology. He is working to renew the materialist analysis of stateless societies and has published several books, including Justice and Warfare in Aboriginal Australia (Lexington).

List of Figures and Tables



Introduction



1 Raiders of the Lost Matriarch

 1 True and False Stakes in an Old Debate

 2 Amazons and Penelopes: Bachofen’s Myths

 3 Morgan and the Iroquois

 4 Engels and the Economy

 5 Our Mother Who Wast in Heaven

 6 Evolution, a Woman’s Achievement?

 7 The Blurred Lines of Matriarchy



2 The Impossible Quest for Matriarchy

 1 The Mythical Reliability of Myths

 2 Elusive Goddess

 3 Gendered Speculations

 4 Born of Unknown Father?

 5 Succession or Elimination?

 6 Matrilineality and the Situation of Women

 7 Deceptive Matriarchies



3 Twenty-Four Millenia in the Life of Women

 1 How Old Is Male Domination?

 2 Cultivators

 3 Hunter-Gatherers without Wealth: ‘A Woman Is Less Than the Dust’?

 4 Other Hunter-Gatherers, Other Gender Relations

 5 What Is Sex Equality?



4 The Place of Economy

 1 Engels: an Outdated Scenario

 2 Public and Private Spheres

 3 Kollontai’s Theorem

 4 A Provisional Assessment



5 Spears and Digging Sticks: The Sexual Division of Labour

 1 Measuring the Phenomenon

 2 The Elusive Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour

 3 Consequences of the Sexual Division of Labour



6 Evolutions, Powers and Counter-Powers

 1 From Domination to Exploitation: the Role of Wealth

 2 Politics: a Man’s Business

 3 Economy Once Again

 4 Did Women’s Status Deteriorate with the Emergence of Social Classes?



7 Testimonies from the past

 1 Some General Considerations

 2 The Upper Palaeolithic

 3 Fallacies and Dubious Cases

 4 The Exception That Proves the Rule: Women Warriors of the Steppes

 5 Confirmations



8 Conclusion



Appendix1: Periodising Prehistory

Appendix2: Atlas of Mentioned People

References