ABSTRACT
During the first phase the Neolithic builders had cleared an area for the building, possibly by leveling an earlier structure that once stood underneath a structure the excavators might hope to discover later on. The villages, Marija Gimbutas believed, had been destroyed by raiders from the east, who stamped out Europe's peaceful, Mother Goddess worshipping matriarchies and replaced them with patriarchical warrior cultures. Ruth Tringham and Mira Stevanovic did share a keen interest in Neolithic architecture, as well as a burning curiosity about why so many houses at so many sites in South-eastern Europe including Gomolava and Selevachad were destroyed by fires. Yet the people who lived in this house remained distant, ill-defined, and faceless, and their motivations for burning down half of their house were still murky. Other archaeologists suggested that they were accidental, caused by the spontaneous combustion of grain stores or by hearth or oven fires that got out of control.
