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Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 1892, Sydney
Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
, New South Wales
New South Wales

New South Wales is Australia's oldest and most populous States and territories of Australia, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland....
–19 October 1957, Mt. Victoria
Mount Victoria, New South Wales

Mount Victoria is the westernmost village/township in the City of Blue Mountains. Located 120 kilometres from Sydney and 1043 metres above sea-level, the settlement has a population of 869 people as of the 2001 Census....
, New South Wales) was an Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n philologist by training who later specialised in archaeology
Archaeology

Archaeology, archeology, or arch?ology is the science that studies Homo cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, Artifact , features, Biofact s, and cultural landscape....
. Usually known as just Gordon Childe, he was perhaps best known for his excavation
Excavation

The term archaeological excavation has a double meaning.# Excavation is the best known and most commonly used within the science of archaeology....
 of the unique Neolithic
Neolithic

The Neolithic period was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 Before the Christian Era in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age....
 site of Skara Brae
Skara Brae

||-||-||-|Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of mainland Orkney Islands, Scotland....
 in Orkney and for his Marxist
Marxism

Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism holds at its core a Marxist analysis of Critique of capitalism and a theory of social change....
 views which influenced his thinking about prehistory. He is also credited with coining the terms "Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunter-gatherer communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement ....
" and "Urban Revolution
Urban revolution

In anthropology and archaeology, the Urban Revolution is the process by which small, kin-based, nonliterate agricultural villages were transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies....
". He was one of the great archaeological synthesizers attempting to place his discoveries inside a theory of prehistoric development on a wider European and world scale.

de was born in 1892 in Sydney
Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
 He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammer School (Shore) and the University of Sydney
University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in Australia. It was established in Sydney in 1850. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight " universities that are highly ranked in terms of their research performance....
.






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Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 1892, Sydney
Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
, New South Wales
New South Wales

New South Wales is Australia's oldest and most populous States and territories of Australia, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland....
–19 October 1957, Mt. Victoria
Mount Victoria, New South Wales

Mount Victoria is the westernmost village/township in the City of Blue Mountains. Located 120 kilometres from Sydney and 1043 metres above sea-level, the settlement has a population of 869 people as of the 2001 Census....
, New South Wales) was an Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n philologist by training who later specialised in archaeology
Archaeology

Archaeology, archeology, or arch?ology is the science that studies Homo cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, Artifact , features, Biofact s, and cultural landscape....
. Usually known as just Gordon Childe, he was perhaps best known for his excavation
Excavation

The term archaeological excavation has a double meaning.# Excavation is the best known and most commonly used within the science of archaeology....
 of the unique Neolithic
Neolithic

The Neolithic period was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 Before the Christian Era in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age....
 site of Skara Brae
Skara Brae

||-||-||-|Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of mainland Orkney Islands, Scotland....
 in Orkney and for his Marxist
Marxism

Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism holds at its core a Marxist analysis of Critique of capitalism and a theory of social change....
 views which influenced his thinking about prehistory. He is also credited with coining the terms "Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunter-gatherer communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement ....
" and "Urban Revolution
Urban revolution

In anthropology and archaeology, the Urban Revolution is the process by which small, kin-based, nonliterate agricultural villages were transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies....
". He was one of the great archaeological synthesizers attempting to place his discoveries inside a theory of prehistoric development on a wider European and world scale.

Biography

Childe was born in 1892 in Sydney
Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
 He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammer School (Shore) and the University of Sydney
University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in Australia. It was established in Sydney in 1850. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight " universities that are highly ranked in terms of their research performance....
. He obtained in a B. A in 1914. He then went to Britain to attend the Queen's College
The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its eighteenth-century architecture....
 at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
  and was awarded a B. Litt. in 1916 and a B. A. in 1917. He returned to Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
, where he became Private Secretary
Private Secretary

In the United Kingdom government, a Private Secretary is a civil servant in a Department or Ministry, responsible to the Secretary of State or Minister of the Crown....
 to John Storey
John Storey (politician)

John Storey was Premier of New South Wales from 12 April 1920 until his sudden death in Sydney. His leadership enabled the New South Wales Australian Labor Party to recover after the split over conscription and to allow it to continue to be a left-wing pragmatist rather than a socialist party....
, Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council
New South Wales Legislative Council

The New South Wales Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of New South Wales of New South Wales in Australia....
 for Balmain
Balmain, New South Wales

Balmain is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Balmain is located slightly west of the Sydney central business district, in the Local Government Areas in Australia of the Municipality of Leichhardt....
 and shortly thereafter New South Wales
New South Wales

New South Wales is Australia's oldest and most populous States and territories of Australia, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland....
 Premier
Premiers of the Australian states

The Premiers of the Australian states are the de facto heads of the executive governments in the six states of the Australia. They perform the same function at the state level as the Prime Minister of Australia performs at the national level....
. His 1923 book How Labour Governs was based on his experience in this period of his life. On Storey's sudden death in 1921, Childe left politics and travelled in Europe.

His book, The Dawn of European Civilisation (1925) won him immediate recognition, and he followed it up with other books on archaeological theory. In that first book he laid out his ideas on the relation between European and Near Eastern development. He also explored the relation of archeology and Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 which he further developed in The Aryans: a study of Indo-European origins, (1926). He posited a modified diffusionist theory of the spread of civilization, identifying South Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
 as the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
Proto-Indo-Europeans

The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, and likely lived around 4000 BC, during the Copper Age and the Bronze Age, or possibly earlier, during the Neolithic or Paleolithic eras....
 and studied this theory in the context of the archeological record. His basic ideas contributed to the Kurgan
Kurgan

Kurgan is the Russian language word for a tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood.The distribution of such tumuli in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the area of the Pit Grave or Kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe....
 invasion theory later suggested by Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeology known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old European Culture", a term she introduced....
. Childe’s original concept of the Aryans was inevitably influenced by the racist ideology of his time, but nevertheless it differed from the Nazis' crude Aryan supremacist ideas, which he attacked strongly throughout the thirties.

He was multi-talented, being an accomplished linguist, and by 1927 had been appointed Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at Edinburgh
Edinburgh

Edinburgh ; is the Capital city of Scotland, a position it has held since 1437. It is the seventh largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest Scottish City status in the United Kingdom after Glasgow....
, a post which he held until 1946. His excavation of Skara Brae
Skara Brae

||-||-||-|Skara Brae is a large stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of mainland Orkney Islands, Scotland....
 took place in 1928, when he was summoned to supervise work which had begun after a storm had uncovered previously undiscovered additional structures. For Childe, this was unusual, as he was not a great excavator; his main skill lay in interpreting of data discovered by others. That year also saw the publication of his book, The Most Ancient East (1928), which explored the rise of civilization in the Near East
Near East

Near East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other....
.

Childe was also an accomplished populiser: his two most widely read books, What Happened in History (1942) and Man Makes Himself (1951), were readable accounts that brought archaeology to a wider audience and helped make him well known. After leaving Edinburgh, Childe was appointed director of the Institute of Archaeology
Institute of Archaeology

The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London , England. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury....
 at the University of London
University of London

Based primarily in London, England, United Kingdom, the University of London is a federal mega university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes....
 for the ten years until his retirement in 1956. He returned to Australia, but died in 1957 in the Blue Mountains. He fell to his death in circumstances which may have been accidental; however, in view of his personal circumstances, it is thought more likely that he committed suicide. Childe had been involved in left-wing politics in Australia, but his Marxism was more intellectual than activist.

Childe was the first to explore developments he called the "Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunter-gatherer communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement ....
" and "Urban Revolution
Urban revolution

In anthropology and archaeology, the Urban Revolution is the process by which small, kin-based, nonliterate agricultural villages were transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies....
" in the archeological record, and they are still vital concepts in prehistoric studies. Further developments in civilization (Childe did concentrate his attention on Europe and the Near East, despite the occasional excursus) could be explained with reference to the changes in technology that occurred, which were accessible from the archaeological record. To do this, Childe started to use terms like Bronze Age
Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is, with respect to a given prehistory, the period in that society when the most advanced metalworking included smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper and tin ores, creating a bronze alloy by melting those metals together, and casting them into bronze artifact s....
 or Iron Age
Iron Age

In archaeology, the Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron were prominent....
 as a way of exploring shifts from one level of material development to another, rather than just for dating.

Childe was unusual in emphasising the Hellenistic period as the apex of Graeco-Roman civilisation, rather than the world of Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 in the 5th century BC, or that of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. In the Hellenized eastern Mediterranean, and particularly at Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
 he saw the culmination of classical culture.

Childe is referenced in the 2008 Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. Forbes magazine places Spielberg's net worth at $3.1 billion....
-George Lucas
George Lucas

George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an Academy Award-nominated United States film director, film producer, screenwriter and chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd. He is best known for being the creator of the Epic film Sci-Fi franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones....
 blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Works

  • How Labour Governs (1923) -
  • The Dawn of European Civilization (1925)
  • The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins (1926)
  • The Danube in Prehistory (1929)
  • The Bronze Age (1930)
  • The Forest Cultures of Northern Europe: A Study in Evolution and Diffusion (1931)
  • The Continental Affinities of British Neolithic Pottery (1932)
  • Neolithic Settlement in the West of Scotland (1934)
  • New Light on the Most Ancient East (1935)
  • Prehistory of Scotland (1935)
  • Man Makes Himself (1936, slightly revised 1941, 1951)
  • Prehistoric communities of the British Isles (1940, 2nd edition 1947)
  • What Happened in History (1942)
  • The Story of Tools (1944)
  • Progress and Archaeology (1944, 1945)
  • History (1947)
  • Social Worlds of Knowledge (1949)
  • Social Evolution (1951)
  • The Constitution of Archaeology as a Science (1953)
  • Society and Knowledge (1956)
  • Piecing Together the Past: The Interpretation of Archeological Data (1956)


Further reading

  • Braidwood, Robert J. "Vere Gordon Childe, 1892–1957: [Obituary]", American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 60, No. 4. (Aug., 1958), pp. 733–736.
  • Childe, V. Gordon. Foundations of Social Archaeology: Selected Writings of V. Gordon Childe, edited by Thomas C. Patterson and Charles E. Orser, Jr.. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005 (hardback, ISBN 1-84520-272-4; paperback, ISBN 1-84520-273-2).
  • Daniel, Glyn Edmund; Chippindale, Christopher. The Pastmasters: Eleven Modern Pioneers of Archaeology: V. Gordon Childe, Stuart Piggott, Charles Phillips, Christopher Hawkes, Seton Lloyd, Robert J. Braidwood, Gordon R. Willey, C.J. Becker, Sigfried J. De Laet, J. Desmond Clark, D.J. Mulvaney. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989 (hardcover, ISBN 0500050511).
  • Faulkner, Neil
    Neil Faulkner (archaeologist)

    Dr Neil Faulkner is an academic Archaeology who works mainly as Features Editor of the magazine Current Archaeology.Faulkner read Social and Political Science at King's College, Cambridge and later became a teacher before turning to archaeology....
    . , International Socialism
    International Socialism (journal)

    International Socialism is a quarterly journal of socialist theory published by the British Socialist Workers Party and currently edited by Chris Harman....
    , No. 116. (Autumn, 2007).
  • Gathercole, P. "'Patterns in Prehistory': An Examination of the Later Thinking of V. Gordon Childe", World Archaeology, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Oct., 1971), pp. 225–232.
  • Gathercole, P, Irving, T.H and Melleuish, G, Childe and Australia: Archaeology, Politics and Ideas, (University of Queensland Press, 1995)
  • Green, Sally. Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe. Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England: Moonraker Press, 1981 (hardcover, ISBN 0-239-00206-7).
  • Harris, David R. (ed.) The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe: Contemporary Perspectives. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1994 (hardcover, ISBN 0-522-84622-X).
  • McNairn, Barbara. The Method and Theory of V. Gordon Childe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980 (paperback, ISBN 0-85224-389-8).
  • Rouse, Irving. "Vere Gordon Childe, 1892–1957: [Obituary]", American Antiquity, Vol. 24, No. 1. (Jul., 1958), pp. 82–84.
  • Sherratt, Andrew V. "Gordon Childe: Archaeology and Intellectual History", Past and Present, No. 125. (Nov., 1989), pp. 151–185.
  • Trigger, Bruce G. Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980 (hardcover, ISBN 0-500-05034-1); New York: Columbia University Press, 1980 (hardcover, ISBN 0-231-05038-0).
  • Tringham, Ruth. "V. Gordon Childe 25 Years after: His Relevance for the Archaeology of the Eighties: A Review Article", Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1983), pp. 85–100.