Editing V. Gordon Childe (section)

===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}}