Vere Gordon Childe

Born Apr. 14, 1892, in Sydney, Australia; died Oct. 19,1957. British archaeologist. Fellow of the British Academy (from 1940). Director of the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London (1946–56).

Childe conducted excavations in Scotland and Northern Ireland and on the Orkney Islands, at Skara Brae. His main works dealt with the prehistory of Europe and the East, in which, guided by the works of Soviet researchers, he proposed a materialistic basis for historical processes. He opposed the theory of migrationism, which explains changes in culture through migrations of peoples, advancing instead the theory of the independence of cultural development. Childe studied the origin and development of farming—the Neolithic revolution, the transition from the hunting and gathering economy of the Paleolithic to the producing economy of the Neolithic. Although he regarded the evolution of the economy as the primary factor in social progress, he reduced the problem of the rise of a state system to a question of the origin of cities (the urban revolution), not devoting proper attention to social relations.

Childe was accidentally killed in the mountains near Sydney.