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Biography:

Vere Gordon Childe

The Australian prehistorian and archeologist Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957) pioneered in the systematic study of European prehistory of the 3d and 2d millenniums B.C. and showed how technological advances marked the birth of human civilizations.

On April 14, 1892, V. Gordon Childe was born in Sydney, New South Wales. He studied at Oxford University under Sir Arthur Evans and John Linton Myers. His studies there concerning the relation of archeology and Indo-Aryan languages led to The Dawn of European Civilization (1925; 6th ed. 1957) and The Aryans (1926).

Childe became the first Abercromby professor of prehistoric archeology at the University of Edinburgh in 1927 and taught there until 1946. From 1928 to 1931 he supervised the excavation of the Skara Brae Stone Age village in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. In his evolution as a scholar Childe, like all 19th-and early-20th-century prehistorians, was strongly influenced by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and by the positivism of Auguste Comte, Max Weber, and Sir Edward B. Tylor.

Childe's aim was to form a truly international approach to prehistoric studies in order to understand how civilizations arose. His method was based on an integrative principle. He related the known events of history to the data of natural history so as to form a total picture of how human civilization had developed. He studied the legal, political, economic, religious, and sociological structures of primitive and developing societies and linked the relevant studies with anthropology, geology, biology, zoology, and paleontology. His Man Makes Himself (1936) and Social Evolution (1951) are prime examples of his power of synthesis.

For Childe the invention of writing was a primary index of civilization. He maintained that the invention of writing by ancient peoples always coincided with a critical threshold in their economic and demographic structure. At that moment they had achieved a certain economic surplus, a definite preoccupation with such things as calendrical astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic, and some literary occupations mainly of a religious bent. In addition, their population involved a more complex sociopolitical organization than ever before. Childe used the term "civilization" to refer to this critical turning point rather than to any qualitative character of the civilization in terms of technological, artistic, and leisure indexes.

Childe was director of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London from 1946 to 1956. He died on Oct. 19, 1957, on Mt. Victoria, New South Wales.

Further Reading

Stuart Piggott gives details of Childe's life in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 44 (1959). An assessment of his work is in Julian H. Steward, Theory of Culture Change (1955), and in Robert Redfield, The Characterizations of Civilizations (1956).

Additional Sources

Green, Sally, Prehistorian: a biography of V. Gordon Childe, Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker, 1981.

Trigger, Bruce G., Gordon Childe, revolutions in archaeology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Vere Gordon Childe

(born April 14, 1892, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia — died Oct. 19, 1957, Mount Victoria, N.S.W.) Australian-British archaeologist. He taught at the University of Edinburgh (1927 – 46) and later directed the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London (1946 – 56). His study of European prehistory, especially in The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), sought to evaluate the relationship between Europe and the Middle East and to examine the structure and character of ancient cultures of the Western world. His later books included The Most Ancient Near East (1928) and The Danube in Prehistory (1929). His approach established a tradition of prehistoric studies.

For more information on Vere Gordon Childe, visit Britannica.com.

 
Archaeology Dictionary: Gordon Vere Childe

(1892–1957) [Bi]

Celebrated prehistorian who worked widely in Europe and who is particularly associated with the definition and application of the concept of ‘culture’ in archaeological analysis. Born in North Sydney, Australia, he graduated in Latin, Greek, and philosophy from Sydney University in 1913, developing at the same time good linguistic skills. Growing up alongside the rise of the Australian Labour Party he became a militant socialist. Between 1914 and 1916 Childe studied for a B. Litt. at Queen's College, Oxford, becoming a close friend of Rajani Palme Dutt who was later a leading figure in the British Communist Party. In 1916 Childe returned to Australia and became involved in the anti-conscription movement and Labour politics while supporting himself teaching in a Queensland secondary school and for a time at Sydney University.

After briefly working as a publicity officer in London he abandoned political work in 1922 and resumed his interest in European prehistory, although in 1926 he published his only political book How Labour governs (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press). From 1925 he was appointed librarian at the Royal Anthropological Institute, a post which allowed him to continue his researches and especially his travels in eastern Europe. Several books were published in this period including The dawn of European civilization (1925, London: Routledge) and The Ayrians (1926, New York: A. A. Knopf). In 1927 he joined with archaeologists from the Hungarian National Museum and Cambridge University in excavating the Hungarian Bronze Age site of Toszeg. In the same year he was appointed Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University. By the end of the 1920s he had attained the greatest achievement of his early works, the linking of the idea of an archaeological culture as a device for tracing the history of a particular people with the idea of diffusionism as a means for the spread of ideas and people. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s he applied these ideas locally within the British Isles and to the wider European scene, publishing such key works as The Danube in prehistory (1929, Oxford: Clarendon Press), Prehistory of Scotland (1935, London: Kegan Paul), and Prehistoric communities of the British Isles (1940, London: Chambers). His pursuit of Marxism took him to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1935.

He left Edinburgh in 1946 to became the Director of the Institute of Archaeology at London University, a position he retained until his retirement in 1956. He returned to Australia, seemingly disillusioned in his own ability to devise new ways of carrying forward the Marxist analysis of prehistory. After presenting some lectures and visiting friends, he committed suicide, falling 300m from Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales on the morning of 19 October 1957.

[Bio.: B. Trigger, 1980, Gordon Childe. London: Thames & Hudson]
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Childe, Vere Gordon,
1892–1957, British archaeologist, b. Australia. An Oxford graduate, he taught at the Univ. of Edinburgh (1927–46) and the Univ. of London (1946–56). He gained renown for his monumental synthesis of European prehistory, The Dawn of European Civilization (1925, 6th ed. 1957), and The Prehistory of European Society (1958). His studies in Asian archaeology led him to advance the concepts of the agricultural and urban revolutions in New Light on the Most Ancient East (1929, rev. ed. 1953). His interpretation of human history is put forth in two popular works, Man Makes Himself (1937, rev. ed. 1951) and What Happened in History (1942).
 
Wikipedia: Vere Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe (April 14, 1892, Sydney, New South Wales–October 19, 1957, Mt. Victoria, New South Wales) was an Australian philologist by training who later specialised in archaeology, perhaps best known for his excavation of the unique Neolithic site of Skara Brae in Orkney and for his Marxist views which informed his thinking about prehistory. He is also credited with coining the terms "Neolithic Revolution" and "Urban Revolution". 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, and came to Britain to attend the University of Oxford (Queen's College). He returned to Australia, where he became Private Secretary to John Storey, Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council for Balmain and shortly thereafter New South Wales Premier. 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 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 as the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and studied this theory in the context of the archeological record. His basic ideas contributed to the Kurgan invasion theory later suggested by Marija Gimbutas. 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, a post which he held until 1946. His excavation of Skara Brae 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.

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 at the University of London 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" and "Urban Revolution" 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 or Iron Age 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 in the 5th century BC, or that of the Roman Empire. In the Hellenized eastern Mediterranean, and particularly at Alexandria he saw the culmination of classical culture.

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)
  • The Constitution of Archaeology as a Science (1953)
  • Society and Knowledge (1956)
  • Piecing Together the Past: The Interpretation of Archeological Data (1956)

References and 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.

Gathercole, P, Irving, T.H and Melleuish, G, Childe and Australia: Archaeology, Politics and Ideas, (University of Queensland Press, 1995)


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