Vere Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe (April 14th, 1892 - October 19th, 1957) was a Archéologue Australia N. It directed the Fouille of the Neolithic site of Skara Brae, in Scotland. It is also known to have introduced the expressions “Neolithic Révolution” and “urban Revolution”. It especially was one of the large archeologists able to replace their discoveries within a theory of the prehistoric development on a European and world scale. Its ideas Marxiste S nourished its thought on the Préhistoire.

Biography

Childe was born in 1892 in Sydney. After its academic works undertaken in England to the University of Oxford (Queen' S College), it returned to Australia to become between 1916 and 1921 the private secretary of John Storey, Membre of the Parliament of the Wales News of the South then Prime Minister. Its work of 1923, How the Labor control , rested on the experience gained during these years. After the sudden death of Storey in 1921, Childe gave up the policy and set out again in Europe.

Its entitled book the Paddle of European civilization (1925) was worth an immediate notoriety to him, and it connected with other works on the archaeological theory. In this first book, it founds its theory of the relations between the European and close relation-Eastern developments. It explored also the reports/ratios of archeology and the Indo-European languages which it will develop later in the Aryens: a study of the Indo-European origins (1926).

It posed in theory a more detailed theory of an Aryan invasion of Europe, initially postulated by max Muller, identifying the South of Russia like the fatherland of the Proto-indo-Europeans. Its basic ideas also contributed to the theory of the invasion of Kurgan suggested later by Marija Gimbutas. The original concept of Childe on the Aryan ones was inevitably under the influence of the ideology of its time, but differed deeply from the ideas Aryan supremacists of the Nazis whom it strongly attacked during the Thirties.

It was multi-qualified, being also an accomplished linguist. In 1927, it was named Professor d' Archéologie in Edinburgh, a station which it held up to 1946. Its excavations of Skara Brae began in 1928 when it was called to supervise the work which had started following a storm having put at the day of new structures beyond those already known. For Childe it was unusual because he was not a specialist in the excavations. Its essential contribution consisted in the interpretation of the data and discovered other researchers. This year there, 1928, its book Is oldest saw appearing, which explored the emergence of civilization in the Middle East.

Childe was also a remarkable pedagog: its two books most largely read, What arrived in the History (1942) and Man Makes Himself (1951), were very readable talks which made discover archeology with a broader audience and helped to make it famous.

Leaving Edinburgh after the war, Childe was appointed Directeur of the Institute of Archeology at the University of London until its retirement in 1956. Of return in Australia, it died there in 1957 in the Blue Mountains, in circumstances which let think of a suicide more than with an accident.

Principal contributions

Childe was implied in the political activities of left in Australia, but its Marxisme was more intellectual than militant. Perhaps it was natural that, being an archeologist whose only information sources were material indices of the past, it was led to adopt a holistic theory which explained done everything like resulting from changes in the modes of production. It was obvious that the first men were Chasseurs-cueilleurs, and that civilizations emerged when they initially had adopted agriculture and then gathered their population in villages. These developments, which it named " Neolithic Revolution " and " Revolution urbaine" and were initially outlined starting from the archaeological evidence which it had gathered, are always major concepts in the prehistoric studies.

The later developments of civilizations (Childe concentrated on Europe and the the Middle East, with some excursions outwards) could be explained by the technical changes which intervened and which were discernible through the " files archéologiques". To carry out this Childe started to use expressions like the Bronze Age or the Âge of Iron, like a way of outlining the evolutions of a material level with another, rather than a simple tool of dating.

Childe was one of rare to put forward the hellenistic Period like top of civilization Gréco-Roman E rather than the world of Athens at the 5th century, or that of the Roman Empire. In the hellenized Eastern Mediterranean, and particularly Alexandria, he saw the high point of the traditional culture.

Works

The Dawn off European Civilization (1925)
The Danube in Prehistory (1929)
The Bronzes Age (1930) off
New Light one the Most Ancient East (1935)
Prehistory Scotland (1935)
Man makes himself (1936)
Prehistoric communities off the British Isles (1940, 2nd edition 1947)
What Happened in History (1942)
Progress and Archeology (1944, 1945)
History (1947)
Man Makes Himself (1951)

Reference

The Archeology off V. Gordon Childe , David R. Harris ISBN 052284622X

External bonds

Biography in American Anthropological Association
E-Text off “How Labor Governs”

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