Vere Gordon Childe

1892 - 1957

Vere Gordon Childe, born on April 14, 1892 in North Sydney, Australia. His father was an Anglican minister. At the University of Sydney, he studied the classics and graduated with a BA in 1914. That same year, Childe  had a scholarship in the Classics to attend Oxford University, where he graduated with a B. Litt, a first class honors in the humanities. While there he acquired an interest in European prehistory and Hegelian and  Marxist philosophy, which transformed into his commitment to socialism. He then served the Premier of New South Wales as his private secretary for several years.  In 1922 he decided to travel and study in Central and Eastern Europe.

Childe was Librarian to the Royal Anthropological Institute beginning in 1925. He had the honor of being appointed the first Abercomby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University, a position he held from 1927 to 1946. He then became a professor of European archaeology at the University of London  until 1956.

 From an intensive study of published and unpublished sources, museums, his own field work and extensive travel, Childe was an unsurpassed scholar in the area of archaeological evidence. Skara Brae, the Neolithic site in Orkney, was one of Childe's most famous excavations. He was very skillful at examining archaeological cultures by bringing together vast amounts of data. He explained how prehistoric human groups were distinct and could be defined by recurring groupings of structures and artifacts.

Childe was instrumental in supplying the basis of  knowledge about Old World archaeology. He traveled throughout Greece, Central Europe and the Balkans studying the literature. His work,  The Dawn of European Civilization, shows how the elements of Near Eastern and Mediterranean civilization moved northward to the rest of the continent. In one of his more famous works, Man Makes Himself,  he illustrated how the Neolithic and urban revolutions impacted mankind. Child's work was crucial in the development of cultural-historical archaeology.  Vere Gordon Childe was a very accomplished man and he laid the foundation of the theory and methodology of archaeology in the Old World.

            V. Gordon Childe was in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, studying rock formations, when he fell and died on October 19, 1957. He was enjoying a visit to his homeland after retiring as Director of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London . Some of his publications include:

    The Dawn of European Civilization (1925)

    What Happened in History (1942)

    Progress and Archaeology (1944)

    Man Makes Himself (1951)

 

References:

Biography Vere Gordon Childe

American Antiquity Vol XXIV [1,1958] page 82

www.bbc.co.uk/history

 

Written by: Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota 2000

Edited by: Lillian Dolentz, 2009