Vere Gordon Childe: biography and contributions of this Australian archaeologist.

Summary of the life and scientific contributions of Vere Gordon Childe, influential archaeologist.

Vere Gordon Childe was an Australian archaeologist who contributed to archaeology being taken seriously as an independent science instead of being seen as a mere auxiliary science.

His work helped to understand the cultural evolution of the prehistoric human being, as well as contributing to the idea that it is through the contact of different peoples, breaking their isolationism, that progress is generated.

We will now get to know the life of this researcher through a biography of Vere Gordon Childe.

Brief biography of Vere Gordon Childe

Gordon Vere Childe was born in Sydney, Colony of New South Wales, Australia, on April 14, 1892.. He was the son of middle-class English immigrants. He spent his childhood living in the Oceanic country, studying there and graduating from the university in his hometown.

He later moved to Oxford, England, where he was initially interested in classical philology studies. However, Gordon Childe opted to change his field under the influence of Professors Arthur Evans and J. Myres, finally opting for prehistoric archaeology..

As a student, he was active in the Fabian Society of Oxford and was an outspoken opponent of the First World War.

Back and forth from Australia

After completing his studies in England, he returned to his native Australia. He joined the Australian Union of Democratic Control, which succeeded in rejecting compulsory military service. He became personal secretary to the Labour governor of New South Wales but left in 1921, deeply disenchanted with politics, he would return to Europe. Of his raw experience with the governor he would write a book "How Labour Governs"..

Vere Gordon Childe made a trip to central and eastern Europe to see first hand the archaeological remains found there. He returned to Great Britain, where he held several jobs, including that of librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute until 1925, when he published "The Dawn of European Civilization" ("The Origins of Civilization").

Thanks to the success of this work the University of Edinburgh offered Childe the newly created chair of archaeology, which allowed him to be one of the first to be appointed to the chair.which allowed him to be one of the first professional archaeologists of his time.

Years of popularity

In the following years he published more works, both specialized and for the general public, all of which brought him international fame.

His most important specialized publications are "The Dawn of European Civilization", "The Danube in Prehistory" (1929) and "The Bronze Age" (1930).

His books for laymen, marked by his interest in cultural evolution, include "What Happened in History" (1942), in which he synthesizes his vision of history and culture.

These works made Vere Gordon Childe well known before he reached the age of 40.. His great field work and literary production earned him the fame of one of the most reputable archaeologists of his time.

End of his life

After a stay in Edinburgh in 1945 he moved to London to teach at the University of London, at the same time he directed the Institute of Archaeology. During his last years his literary production focused on the study of methods of work in archaeology, with the aim of renewinghis last years his literary production focused on the study of working methods in archaeology, with the aim of renewing this discipline.

His ideas with respect to this task were collected in his posthumous work "The Prehistory of European Society" (1958). In 1956 he returned to his native Australia and died the following year.

The circumstances of his death are considered to be extremely strange.. It is said that Childe believed that the best time for life to end is when one is happy and strong which, coupled with an almost pathological fear of old age, he is said to have intended this to be so with his life at his own hand.

On October 19, 1957 Childe went to an area in Govett's Leap, in the Australian Blue Mountains where he had grown up. He climbed a mountain, left his hat, glasses, compass, pipe and a raincoat at the top and fell fatally from a height of 300 meters. He was 65 years old.

The official report at the time indicated that his death was accidental, although acquaintances would reveal that, judging by the contents of some letters left by Childe himself before the tragic event, this incident had been entirely his own decision.

The thought of Vere G. Childe

Gordon Childe's thought can be approached from two angles. One is from his ideas on archaeology, which changed the mentality of this discipline, and the other is from his conception of history and its evolution. These points are strongly intertwined in Childe's literary production. Nor can his work be separated from the Marxist ideology he held, which is evident in his thesis on the progress of the human being and the importance given to social and economic aspects. and the importance given to social and economic aspects.

Childe tried to stop seeing archaeology as a mere auxiliary science, an idea widely accepted in his time. For him, the information revealed by archaeology constituted a historical document of great importance, far superior to that available in the written texts of treatises, books and other documents of past times. The method of extraction of archaeological remains, together with the interpretation of what they were used for and what they say about the people who used them, constitute the fundamental pillar of archaeology, a science of pure law.

Gordon Childe is considered a diffusionist.. It defines a culture as certain types of remains, such as pots, ornaments, funerary remains... that repeatedly appear together. The changes of these cultures throughout history would correspond to ethnic modifications due to migratory movements, invasions or as a consequence of the diffusion of an object or idea. Childe's method was to seek to reconstruct prehistory by chronologically ordering the sets of objects that were exponents of these displacements or that exerted influences between peoples in one way or another.

With the rise of Hitler in Germany and the expansion of the Nazi thesis, Vere Gordon Childe was very concerned about the possibility that his ethnographic and archaeological theories would be misinterpreted. Childe denied that his concept of people had racial implications. and defended the idea that cultural progress is achieved by breaking the isolation of human groups, getting them to put their ideas in common. He considered it important to study the common heritage of humanity.

He devoted several works, both academic and popular, to refute the ethnicist archaeology of Gustaf Kossinna, strongly supported by the Nazis, which proposed that it was possible to trace the origin of races to their prehistoric roots and relate it to the degree of progress acquired. Naturally, those who shared these Nazi theses argued that the white Aryan race was the one that historically had given most evidence of its capacity for progress and development.

Childe's concern about Nazism and its pseudo-science led him to expose his idea of history under a Marxist perspective in two booksThe Origins of Civilization" and "What Happened in History?". In them he reflects on the progress of human beings. After analyzing the first peoples and the organization of ancient civilizations, he concluded that the main factor holding back technological and cultural development in a society is the ruling class. The elites, in order to avoid losing their privileges and changing their social status as society changes, hold back social transformations.

However, this strategy of the ruling class increases the costs of maintaining the state and, also because of the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the rulers, it will damage the economy until civilization collapses. But this decadence of a society does not necessarily imply something negative, but can be an opportunity to reorder the economy and put wealth and ideas back into circulation.

Gordon Childe is credited with being the first to propose a socio-economic interpretation of primitive European societies and to be the leading Marxist archaeologist in the West. and to be the leading Marxist archaeologist in the West. In addition, he contributed concepts as distinctive today as the "Neolithic revolution", a change in human history in which our species intelligently used cultivation and domestication to survive and prosper. Today, this concept has become essential to talk about the origins of agriculture, a key milestone for the human species to become what it is today.