Editing V. Gordon Childe (section)

==Archaeological theory==

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|quote="By far the most important source [of Childe's thinking], especially in the early stages of his career, was the highly developed western European archaeology, which had been established as a scientific discipline for over a century. His research and publications took the form mainly of contributions to the development of that tradition. His thinking was also influenced, however, by ideas derived from Soviet archaeology and American anthropology as well as from more remote disciplines. He had a subsidiary interest in philosophy and politics, and was more concerned than were most archaeologists of his time with justifying the social value of archaeology."|salign = right|source=— [[Bruce Trigger]], 1980.{{sfn|Trigger|1980|pp=12–13}}}}

The biographer Sally Green noted that Childe's beliefs were "never dogmatic, always idiosyncratic" and "continually changing throughout his life".{{sfn|Green|1981|p=79}}
His [[archaeological theory|theoretical approach]] blended together [[Marxism]], [[diffusionism]], and [[Structural functionalism|functionalism]].{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=166}} Childe was critical of the [[evolutionary archaeology]] dominant during the nineteenth century. He believed archaeologists who adhered to it placed a greater emphasis on artefacts than on the humans who had made them.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=247}} Like most archaeologists in Western Europe and the United States at the time, Childe did not regard humans as naturally inventive or inclined to change; thus, he tended to perceive social change in terms of diffusion and migration rather than internal development or cultural evolution.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=3}}

During the decades in which Childe was working, most archaeologists adhered to the [[three-age system]] first developed by the Danish antiquarian [[Christian Jürgensen Thomsen]]. This system rested upon an evolutionary chronology that divided prehistory into the [[Stone Age]], [[Bronze Age]], and [[Iron Age]], but Childe highlighted that many of the world's societies were still effectively Stone Age in their technology.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=77–78}} He nevertheless saw it as a useful model for analysing socio-economic development when combined with a Marxist framework.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=78–79}} He therefore used technological criteria for dividing up prehistory into three ages, but instead used economic criteria for sub-dividing the Stone Age into the [[Palaeolithic]] and [[Neolithic]], rejecting the concept of the [[Mesolithic]] as useless.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=81–82}} Informally, he adopted the division of past societies into the framework of "savagery", "barbarism", and "civilisation" that Engels had employed.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=3}}

===Culture-historical archaeology===

In the early part of his career, Childe was a proponent of the [[Culture-historical archaeology|culture-historical approach to archaeology]], coming to be seen as one of its "founders and chief exponents".{{sfn|Trigger|1994|pp=11, 24}} Culture-historical archaeology revolved around the concept of "[[Archaeological culture|culture]]", which it had adopted from anthropology. This was "a major turning point in the history of the discipline", allowing archaeologists to look at the past through a spatial dynamic rather than a temporal one.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=47–48}} Childe adopted the concept of "culture" from the German philologist and archaeologist [[Gustaf Kossinna]], although this influence might have been mediated through [[Leon Kozłowski]], a Polish archaeologist who had adopted Kossina's ideas and who had a close association with Childe.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=243}} Trigger expressed the view that while adopting Kossina's basic concept, Childe displayed "no awareness" of the "racist connotations" Kossina had given it.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=243}}

Childe's adherence to the culture-historical model is apparent in three of his books—''The Dawn of European Civilisation'' (1925), ''The Aryans'' (1926) and ''The Most Ancient East'' (1928)—but in none of these does he define what he means by "culture".{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=48–49}} Only later, in ''The Danube in Prehistory'' (1929), did Childe give "culture" a specifically archaeological definition.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=46}} In this book, he defined a "culture" as a set of "regularly associated traits" in the [[material culture]]—i.e. "pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites, house forms"—that recur across a given area. He said that in this respect a "culture" was the archaeological equivalent of a "people". Childe's use of the term was non-racial; he considered a "people" to be a social grouping, not a biological race.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=50|2a1=Harris|2y=1994|2p=3}} He opposed the equation of archaeological cultures with biological races—as various nationalists across Europe were doing at the time—and vociferously criticised Nazi uses of archaeology, arguing that the Jewish people were not a distinct biological race but a socio-cultural grouping.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1pp=49–51|2a1=Trigger|2y=1984|2pp=6–7}} In 1935, he suggested that culture worked as a "living functioning organism" and emphasised the adaptive potential of material culture; in this he was influenced by anthropological [[Structural functionalism|functionalism]].{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=53|2a1=Pearce|2y=1988|2p=423}} Childe accepted that archaeologists defined "cultures" based on a subjective selection of material criteria; this view was later widely adopted by archaeologists like [[Colin Renfrew]].{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=60–61}}

Later in his career, Childe tired of culture-historical archaeology.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=3}} By the late 1940s he was questioning the utility of "culture" as an archaeological concept and thus the basic validity of the culture-historical approach.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=59|2a1=Harris|2y=1994|2p=4}} McNairn suggested that this was because the term "culture" had become popular across the [[social sciences]] in reference to all learned modes of behaviour, and not just material culture as Childe had done.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=59}} By the 1940s, Childe was doubtful as to whether a certain archaeological assemblage or "culture" really reflected a social group who had other unifying traits, such as a shared language.{{sfn|Johnson|2010|p=22}} In the 1950s, Childe was comparing the role culture-historical archaeology had among prehistorians to the place of the traditional politico-military approach among historians.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=3}}

===Marxist archaeology===

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|quote="To me Marxism means effectively a way of approach to and a methodological device for the interpretation of historical and archaeological material and I accept it because and in so far as it ''works''. To the average communist and anti-communist alike{{nbs}}... Marxism means a set of dogmas—the words of the master from which as among mediaeval schoolmen, one must deduce truths which the scientist hopes to infer from experiment and observation."|salign = right|source=— Gordon Childe, in letter to [[Rajani Palme Dutt]], 1938.{{sfn|Gathercole|1995|p=97}}}}

Childe has typically been seen as a [[Marxist archaeologist]], being the first archaeologist in the West to use Marxist theory in his work.{{sfn|McGuire|1992|p=69}} Marxist archaeology emerged in the Soviet Union in 1929, when the archaeologist [[Vladislav Ravdonikas|Vladislav I. Ravdonikas]] published a report titled "For a Soviet History of Material Culture". Criticising the archaeological discipline as inherently [[bourgeois]] and therefore anti-socialist, Ravdonikas's report called for a pro-socialist, Marxist approach to archaeology as part of the academic reforms instituted under [[Joseph Stalin]]'s rule.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=326–340}} It was during the mid-1930s, around the time of his first visit to the Soviet Union, that Childe began to make explicit reference to Marxism in his work.{{sfn|Gathercole|2009|p=183}}

Many archaeologists have been profoundly influenced by Marxism's socio-political ideas.{{sfn|Johnson|2010|p=95}} As a [[Historical materialism|materialist]] philosophy, Marxism emphasises the idea that material things are more important than ideas, and that the social conditions of a given period are the result of the existing material conditions, or [[mode of production]].{{sfnm|1a1=Trigger|1y=2007|1p=332|2a1=Johnson|2y=2010|2p=95}} Thus, a Marxist interpretation foregrounds the social context of any technological development or change.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=332}} Marxist ideas also emphasise the biased nature of scholarship, each scholar having their own entrenched beliefs and class loyalties;{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=334}} Marxism thus argues that intellectuals cannot divorce their scholarly thinking from political action.{{sfn|Johnson|2010|p=96}} Green said that Childe accepted "Marxist views on a model of the past" because they offer "a structural analysis of culture in terms of economy, sociology and ideology, and a principle for cultural change through economy".{{sfn|Green|1981|p=79}} McNairn noted that Marxism was "a major intellectual force in Childe's thought",{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=150}} while Trigger said Childe identified with Marx's theories "both emotionally and intellectually".{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=169}}

Childe said he used Marxist ideas when interpreting the past "because and in so far as it ''works''"; he criticised many fellow Marxists for treating the socio-political theory as a set of dogmas.{{sfn|Gathercole|1995|p=97}} Childe's Marxism often differed from the Marxism of his contemporaries, both because he made reference to the original texts of Hegel, Marx, and Engels rather than later interpretations and because he was selective in using their writings.{{sfn|Green|1981|p=79}} McNairn considered Childe's Marxism "an individual interpretation" that differed from "popular or orthodox" Marxism;{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=66}} Trigger called him a "a creative Marxist thinker";{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=11}} Gathercole thought that while Childe's "debt to Marx was quite evident", his "attitude to Marxism was at times ambivalent".{{sfn|Gathercole|1971|p=230}} The Marxist historian [[Eric Hobsbawm]] later described Childe as "the most original English Marxist writer from the days of my youth".{{sfn|Hobsbawm|2008}} Aware that in the context of the [[Cold War]] his affiliation with Marxism could prove dangerous for him, Childe sought to make his Marxist ideas more palatable to his readership.{{sfn|Pearce|1988|p=421}} In his archaeological writings, he sparingly made direct reference to Marx.{{sfn|Gathercole|2009|p=183}} There is a distinction in his published works from the latter part of his life between those that are explicitly Marxist and those in which Marxist ideas and influences are less obvious.{{sfn|Pearce|1988|p=421}} Many of Childe's fellow British archaeologists did not take his adherence to Marxism seriously, regarding it as something which he did for shock value.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=1}}
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|quote="The Marxist view of history and prehistory is admittedly material determinist and materialist. But its determinism does not mean mechanism. The Marxist account is in fact termed '[[dialectical materialism]]'. It is deterministic in as much as it assumes that the historical process is not a mere succession of inexplicable or miraculous happenings, but that all the constituent events are interrelated and form an intelligible pattern."|salign = right|source=— Gordon Childe, 1979 [1949].{{sfn|Childe|1979|p=93}}}}

Childe was influenced by Soviet archaeology but remained critical of it, disapproving of how the Soviet government encouraged the country's archaeologists to assume their conclusions before analysing their data.{{sfnm|1a1=Trigger|1y=1980|1p=177|2a1=Trigger|2y=1984|2p=6|3a1=Trigger|3y=1994|3p=18|4a1=Gathercole|4y=2009|4p=185}} He was also critical of what he saw as the sloppy approach to [[Typology (archaeology)|typology]] in Soviet archaeology.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=7}} As a moderate diffusionist, Childe was heavily critical of the "Marrist" trend in Soviet archaeology, based on the theories of the Georgian philologist [[Nicholas Marr]], which rejected diffusionism in favour of unilinear evolutionism.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1pp=157, 166|2a1=Trigger|2y=1984|2p=7|3a1=Trigger|3y=1994|3p=18}} In his view, it "cannot be un-Marxian" to understand the spread of domesticated plants, animals, and ideas through diffusionism.{{sfn|Trigger|1984|p=7}} Childe did not publicly air these criticisms of his Soviet colleagues, perhaps so as not to offend communist friends or to provide ammunition for right-wing archaeologists.{{sfnm|1a1=Trigger|1y=1984|1p=9|2a1=Trigger|2y=1994|2pp=19, 31–32}} Instead, he publicly praised the Soviet system of archaeology and heritage management, contrasting it favourably with Britain's because it encouraged collaboration rather than competition between archaeologists.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=164}} After first visiting the country in 1935, he returned in 1945, 1953, and 1956, befriending many Soviet archaeologists, but shortly before his suicide sent a letter to the Soviet archaeological community saying he was "extremely disappointed" they had methodologically fallen behind Western Europe and North America.{{sfn|Klein|1994|pp=76, 80–87}}

Other Marxists—such as [[George Derwent Thomson]]{{sfn|Thomson|1949}} and [[Neil Faulkner (archaeologist)|Neil Faulkner]]{{sfn|Faulkner|2007|pp=97–101}}—argued that Childe's archaeological work was not truly Marxist because he failed to take into account [[class struggle]] as an instrument of social change, a core tenet of Marxist thought.{{sfnm|1a1=Allen|1y=1967|1p=58|2a1=Trigger|2y=1980|2p=175}} While class struggle was not a factor Childe considered in his archaeological work, he accepted that historians and archaeologists typically interpreted the past through their own class interests, arguing that most of his contemporaries produced studies with an innate bourgeois agenda.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=160}} Childe further diverged from orthodox Marxism by not employing [[dialectics]] in his methodology.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=134}} He also denied Marxism's ability to predict the future development of human society, and—unlike many other Marxists—did not consider humanity's [[Progress (history)|progress]] into [[Communist society|pure communism]] inevitable, instead opining that society could fossilise or become extinct.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1pp=127, 159|2a1=Trigger|2y=1984|2p=10|3a1=Trigger|3y=1994|3p=21}}

===Neolithic and Urban Revolutions===

Influenced by Marxism, Childe argued that society experienced widescale changes in relatively short periods of time,{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=91}} citing the Industrial Revolution as a modern example.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=91|2a1=Trigger|2y=1984|2p=3|3a1=Greene|3y=1999|3p=99}} This idea was absent from his earliest work; in studies like ''The Dawn of European Civilisation'' he talked of societal change as "transition" rather than "revolution".{{sfn|Greene|1999|p=97}} In writings from the early 1930s, such as ''New Light on the Most Ancient East'', he began to describe social change using the term "revolution", although had yet to fully develop these ideas.{{sfn|Greene|1999|p=98}} At this point, the term "revolution" had gained Marxist associations due to Russia's [[October Revolution]] of 1917.{{sfn|Greene|1999|p=101}} Childe introduced his ideas about "revolutions" in a 1935 presidential address to the Prehistoric Society. Presenting this concept as part of his functional-economic interpretation of the three-age system, he argued that a "[[Neolithic Revolution]]" initiated the Neolithic era, and that other revolutions marked the start of the Bronze and Iron Ages.{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=91|2a1=Greene|2y=1999|2p=98}} The following year, in ''Man Makes Himself'', he combined these Bronze and Iron Age Revolutions into a singular "[[Urban Revolution]]", which corresponded largely to the anthropologist [[Lewis H. Morgan]]'s concept of "civilization".{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=91–92}}

For Childe, the Neolithic Revolution was a period of radical change, in which humans—who were then hunter-gatherers—began cultivating plants and breeding animals for food, allowing for greater control of the food supply and population growth.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|pp=92–95}} He believed the Urban Revolution was largely caused by the development of bronze metallurgy, and in a 1950 paper proposed ten traits that he believed were present in the oldest cities: they were larger than earlier settlements, they contained full-time craft specialists, the surplus was collected together and given to a god or king, they witnessed monumental architecture, there was an unequal distribution of social surplus, writing was invented, the sciences developed, naturalistic art developed, trade with foreign areas increased, and the state organisation was based on residence rather than kinship.{{sfnm|1a1=Childe|1y=1950|1pp=9–16|2a1=McNairn|2y=1980|2pp=98–102}} Childe believed the Urban Revolution had a negative side, in that it led to increased social stratification into classes and oppression of the majority by a power elite.{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=103}} Not all archaeologists adopted Childe's framework of understanding human societal development as a series of transformational "revolutions"; many believed the term "revolution" was misleading because the processes of agricultural and urban development were gradual transformations.{{sfn|Maddock|1995|p=114}}

===Influence on processual and post-processual archaeology===

Through his work, Childe contributed to two of the major theoretical movements in Anglo-American archaeology that developed in the decades after his death, [[Processual archaeology|processualism]] and [[post-processualism]]. The former emerged in the late 1950s, emphasised the idea that archaeology should be a branch of anthropology, sought the discovery of universal laws about society, and believed that archaeology could ascertain objective information about the past. The latter emerged as a reaction to processualism in the late 1970s, rejecting the idea that archaeology had access to objective information about the past and emphasising the subjectivity of all interpretation.{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=24}}

The processual archaeologist Colin Renfrew described Childe as "one of the fathers of processual thought" due to his "development of economic and social themes in prehistory",{{sfn|Renfrew|1994|p=123}} an idea echoed by Faulkner.{{sfn|Faulkner|2007|p=100}} Trigger argued that Childe's work foreshadowed processual thought in two ways: by emphasising the role of change in societal development, and by adhering to a strictly materialist view of the past. Both of these arose from Childe's Marxism.{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=181}} Despite this connection, most American processualists ignored Childe's work, seeing him as a [[Historical particularism|particularist]] who was irrelevant to their search for generalised laws of societal behaviour.{{sfn|Tringham|1983|p=93}} In keeping with Marxist thought, Childe did not agree that such generalised laws exist, believing behaviour is not universal but conditioned by socio-economic factors.{{sfn|Tringham|1983|p=94}} [[Peter Ucko]], one of Childe's successors as director of the Institute of Archaeology, highlighted that Childe accepted the [[subjectivity]] of archaeological interpretation, something in stark contrast to the processualists' insistence that archaeological interpretation could be objective.{{sfn|Ucko|1990|p=xiii}} As a result, Trigger thought Childe to be a "prototypical post-processual archaeologist".{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=24}}