Editing V. Gordon Childe (section)

==Legacy and influence==
{{see also|Latin American social archaeology}}
On his death, Childe was praised by his colleague Stuart Piggott as "the greatest prehistorian in Britain and probably the world".{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=11}} The archaeologist [[Randall H. McGuire]] later described him as "probably the best known and most cited archaeologist of the twentieth century",{{sfn|McGuire|1992|p=69}} an idea echoed by Bruce Trigger,{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=9}} while Barbara McNairn labelled him "one of the most outstanding and influential figures in the discipline".{{sfn|McNairn|1980|p=1}} The archaeologist [[Andrew Sherratt]] described Childe as occupying "a crucial position in the history" of archaeology.{{sfn|Sherratt|1989|p=125}}
Sherratt also noted that "Childe's output, by any standard, was massive".{{sfn|Sherratt|1989|p=125}} Over the course of his career, Childe published more than twenty books and around 240 scholarly articles.{{sfn|Sherratt|1989|p=125}} The archaeologist [[Brian Fagan]] described his books as "simple, well-written narratives" which became "archaeological canon between the 1930s and early 1960s".{{sfn|Fagan|2001|p=178}} By 1956, he was cited as the most translated Australian author in history, having seen his books published in such languages as Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Sweden and Turkish.{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=11}} The archaeologists [[David Lewis-Williams]] and David Pearce considered Childe "probably the most written about" archaeologist in history, commenting that his books were still "required reading" for those in the discipline in 2005.{{sfn|Lewis-Williams|Pearce|2005|p=19}} As of 2024, the [[University of Sydney]] named the Vere Gordon Childe Centre in his honour.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The new Vere Gordon Childe Centre |url=https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/news-and-events/news/2024/06/19/the-new-vere-gordon-childe-centre.html |access-date=27 November 2024 |website=The University of Sydney |language=en-US}}</ref>
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|quote="The most original and useful contributions that I may have made to prehistory are certainly not novel data rescued by brilliant excavation from the soil or by patient research from dusty museum cases, nor yet well founded chronological schemes nor freshly defined cultures, but rather interpretative concepts and methods of explanation."|salign = right|source=— Gordon Childe, 1958.{{sfn|Childe|1958|p=69}}}}

Known as "the Great Synthesizer",{{sfn|Renfrew|1994|p=123}} Childe is primarily respected for developing a synthesis of European and Near Eastern prehistory at a time when most archaeologists focused on regional sites and sequences.{{Sfn|Harris|1994|p=1}} Since his death, this framework has been heavily revised following the discovery of [[radiocarbon dating]],{{sfnm|1a1=Tringham|1y=1983|1p=87|2a1=Harris|2y=1994|2p=2}} his interpretations have been "largely rejected",{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=10}} and many of his conclusions about Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe have been found to be incorrect.{{sfnm|1a1=Sherratt|1y=1989|1p=153|2a1=Sherratt|2y=1990|2p=8}} Childe himself believed his primary contribution to archaeology was in his interpretative frameworks, an analysis supported by Alison Ravetz and Peter Gathercole.{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=13}} According to Sherratt: "What is of lasting value in his interpretations is the more detailed level of writing, concerned with the recognition of patterns in the material he described. It is these patterns which survive as classic problems of European prehistory, even when his explanations of them are recognised as inappropriate".{{sfn|Sherratt|1990|p=8}} Childe's theoretical work had been largely ignored in his lifetime,{{sfnm|1a1=McNairn|1y=1980|1p=3|2a1=Tringham|2y=1983|2p=86}} and remained forgotten in the decades after his death, although it would see a resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=352–353}} It remained best known in Latin America, where Marxism remained a core theoretical current among archaeologists throughout the latter 20th century.{{sfn|Flannery|1994|p=102}}

Despite his global influence, Childe's work was poorly understood in the United States, where his work on European prehistory never became well known.{{sfn|Flannery|1994|p=101}} As a result, in the United States he erroneously gained the reputation of being a Near Eastern specialist and a founder of [[neo-evolutionism]], alongside [[Julian Steward]] and [[Leslie White]],{{sfnm|1a1=Trigger|1y=1980|1pp=10–11|2a1=Harris|2y=1994|2p=2}} despite the fact that his approach was "more subtle and nuanced" than theirs.{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=19}} Steward repeatedly misrepresented Childe as a unilinear evolutionist in his writings, perhaps as part of an attempt to distinguish his own "multilinear" evolutionary approach from the ideas of Marx and Engels.{{sfn|Pearce|1988|p=420}} In contrast to this American neglect and misrepresentation, Trigger believed it was an American archaeologist, [[Robert McCormick Adams, Jr.]], who did the most to posthumously develop Childe's "most innovative ideas".{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=352–353}} Childe also had a small following of American archaeologists and anthropologists in the 1940s who wanted to bring back materialist and Marxist ideas into their research after years in which [[Franz Boas|Boasian]] particularism had been dominant within the discipline.{{sfn|Pearce|1988|p=422}} In the U.S., his name was also referenced in the 2008 blockbuster film ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]''.{{sfn|Rose|2008}}

===Academic conferences and publications===

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|quote="While he may not have provided answers that modern archaeologists find satisfactory, [Childe] challenged colleagues of his own and succeeding decades by constructing a vision of archaeology that was as broad as that of other [[social science]]s, but which also took account of the particular strengths and limitations of archaeological data."|salign = right|source=— Bruce Trigger, 1994{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=24}}}}

Following his death, several articles examining Childe's impact on archaeology were published.{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=11}} In 1980, Bruce Trigger's ''Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology'' appeared, which studied the influences that extended over Childe's archaeological thought;{{sfn|Trigger|1980|p=12}} the same year saw the publication of Barbara McNairn's ''The Method and Theory of V. Gordon Childe'', examining his methodological and theoretical approaches to archaeology.{{sfn|McNairn|1980}} The following year, Sally Green published ''Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe'', in which she described him as "the most eminent and influential scholar of European prehistory in the twentieth century".{{sfn|Green|1981|p=xix}} Peter Gathercole thought the work of Trigger, McNairn, and Green was "extremely important";{{sfn|Trigger|1994|p=24}} Tringham considered it all part of a "let's-get-to-know-Childe-better" movement.{{sfnm|1a1=Tringham|1y=1983|1p=87|2a1=Pearce|2y=1988|2p=417}}

In July 1986, a colloquium devoted to Childe's work was held in [[Mexico City]], marking the 50th anniversary of ''Man Makes Himself'''s publication.{{sfn|Flannery|1994|p=102}} In September 1990, the [[University of Queensland]]'s Australian Studies Centre organised a centenary conference for Childe in [[Brisbane]], with presentations examining both his scholarly and his socialist work.{{sfn|Beilharz|1991|p=108}} In May 1992, a conference marking his centenary was held at the [[UCL Institute of Archaeology]] in London, co-sponsored by the Institute and the Prehistoric Society, both organisations he had formerly headed.{{sfn|Harris|1994|p=vii}} The conference proceedings were published in a 1994 volume edited by [[David R. Harris (geographer)|David R. Harris]], the Institute's director, entitled ''The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe: Contemporary Perspectives''. Harris said the book sought to "demonstrate the dynamic qualities of Childe's thought, the breadth and depth of his scholarship, and the continuing relevance of his work to contemporary issues in archaeology".{{sfn|Harris|1994|p=6}} In 1995, another conference collection was published. Titled ''Childe and Australia: Archaeology, Politics and Ideas'', it was edited by Peter Gathercole, T. H. Irving, and Gregory Melleuish.{{sfn|Gathercole|Irving|Melleuish|1995}} Further papers appeared on the subject of Childe in ensuing years, looking at such subjects as his personal correspondences,{{sfn|Stevenson|2011}} and final resting place.{{sfn|Barton|2000}}