Editing V. Gordon Childe (section)

===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}}