Vere Gordon Childe: A Short Biography
It is quite unlikely that anyone studying or working in the field of archaeology has not heard the name of Vere Gordon Childe referenced or mentioned in passing at least once. Indeed, he is a scholar adhered to even today, 61 years after his death (although for different reasons than he was in his time). His influence in the field of archaeology is immense – despite most of his frameworks and chronologies for European prehistory being rendered obsolete soon after his passing (Gathercole, 2004), his theoretical methods have attracted the attention of the archaeological community again in the recent years.
Leaving his mark even in popular culture (for example, his diffusionist archaeological approach is referenced in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”), Childe was, and still is, a personality that captivates the attention of academics and the general public alike. That is why I chose to describe his life, work, and methodology in this essay. Gordon Vere Childe was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 14th April, 1892. As a youth of 15, he began studying at the Sydney Church of England grammar school. Childe entered the University of Sydney to study classics and philosophy in 1911, graduating in 1914. On the October of the same year, he enrolled for a BLitt degree in Queen’s College, Oxford, obtaining a first in literae humaniores in 1917. (Gathercole, 2004). During his time in university, Childe became increasingly fascinated with Marxist ideas, and involved in socialist activities. In Oxford, he met (and at one point even shared a room with) Rajani Palme Dutt, one of the future founders and most prominent theoreticians in the British Communist Party. The two became close friends. Childe’s friendship with Dutt and Marxist theory would go on to have a significant influence on his future, particularly his academic approaches towards archaeology (Green, 1981; [pp18-22]).
Returning to Australia, Childe experienced difficulties due to his Marxist views, having to give up several academic jobs due to exclusion on political grounds. However, he became appointed as a personal secretary to John Storey, head of the New South Wales Labour Party. While his first book, released in 1923, was a critique of the aforementioned political party (although it did become a historiographical classic), his first book in the field of archaeology was what brought him almost instant academic success. Titled The Dawn of European Civilization and published in 1925, its aim was, according to Childe himself, to provide ‘a comprehensive survey of European prehistory’ (Childe, 1957 [preface]). The book focused on creating a referential framework and timelines of prehistoric Europe by synthesising the prior archaeological discoveries of that time period and placing them in a grand narrative (Kelly, 2014). Childe’s materialist/functionalist and diffusionist approaches (the former influenced by his intense interest in Marxist theory) are already prominent in this work, as he argues that civilization spread through trans-cultural diffusions of ideas all the way from the Orient to Europe. Though in later editions of the text, he admits that his initial “Orientalist” attitude was rather dogmatic, and that radiocarbon dating has ‘vindicated the Orient’s priority over Europe’ in agricultural and metallurgic advances (Childe, 1957).
The upside of a materialist or functionalist approach in archaeology is that it allows the archaeologist to consider objects as part of technology developed by a society, focusing on its use, function, manufacture, and how society adapted to technological change (that is, societal evolution – a common focus of Marxist archaeology). However, such a mode of analysis can create blind spots in the analysis of an object, where an archaeologist may be missing the non-functional – for example, ritual or cultural, - significance of objects.
