Some megalithic structures (the same culture that originally built Stonehenge) from the Neolithic era (first wave farmers) in Western Europe were used as tombs and ancient DNA was sampled from those tombs. The relationships of the people in the tombs to each other suggest that the society was patrilineal, rather than matrilineal as anthropologists had once suggested.
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That's really something, although the last few years the isotopes mitohaplogroups have kind of been showing this, although not as clear as this study. The Neolithics were definitely not the folk of Gimbutas's imagination.
There were some reasons less romantic than those of Gimbutas to have believed that she was right (which clearly, she wasn't). Anthropologists have found that societies of farmers where land in broken via a hoe are much more likely to be a matriarchy, matrilocal, or matrilineal, while societies of farmers where the land is broken via a plough, are almost certain to be a patriarchy, patriclocal, or patrilineal. And, not all of the first farmers appear to have engaged in plough based farming.
I had some problems understanding: land in broken via a hoe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_(tool)
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