Gordon Childe and Broadcasting: Archaeology, Science, and Politics

Imagine a smallish group of specialist scholars ensconced together for days on end, scholars with very different fields of interest and expertise, eating breakfast together in halls talking animatedly over their shared enthusiasm, listening to different papers, discussing again, and more still over lunch, more papers, then wine, and food, and more talking till late. It could be an Italian conference on the work of Antonio Gramsci; it could have been the 1980 Follonica Conference on the political thought and action of Leon Trotsky. This particular occasion was in Brisbane, from the 23rd to the 26th of September 1990. The polymath was not Gramsci, or Trotsky, but Vere Gordon Childe. The Australian Studies Centre of the University of Queensland organised a centenary conference for Childe, which brought together a small, stimulating and extraordinarily convivial bunch of folks working across all kinds of disciplines, but especially interested in two themes: Childe's politics, and his archaeology (and the question of the relationship between them). As Terry Irving and others have shown, Childe's shift into archaeology has too frequently been rendered as a process whereby Childe allegedly turned his back not only on Australia but also on his socialism. This 'marxism as measles' approach to biography is common enough among conservative scholars?if you're not a socialist at twenty you've no heart, if you are afterwards, you've no head, etcetera etcetera. Yet Childe remained consistently committed to socialism throughout his life. His major political-historical work, How Labour Governs (1923), was not a rejection of socialism but a castigation of what came to be known as labourism. And his shift to Britain, and to archaeology, was entirely consistent with his socialism. He was a scholar of the red tie, an impish, yet solitary man, a strong yet finally tragic figure who ended his own life in the Blue Mountains in 1957 rather than grow old in circumstances which he felt unable to control. He was a leading Australian socialist, and the conference appropriately represented a celebration of his life, his contribution to socialism and to scholarship alike. On Sunday, 23 September, I flew to Brisbane and caught a cab to Emmanuel College, where the conference was held. There I met Peter Gathercole. of Darwin College, Cambridge?Childe's impending new biographer, and Michael Roe, of Hobart. Together we set out on a guided tour, 'in the steps of Gordon Childe'. It is, of course, rather difficult to follow those imprints left by Childe in Brisbane after the Great War. The city has changed a great deal. Yet the exercise was both fruitful and pleasant, and its spirit was to anticipate that of the conference itself. An evening, welcome barbecue followed. Archaeologists, sociologists, students of politics and history found themselves conversing animatedly, even though they had nothing in common save for this shared enthusiasm for Gordon Childe. Where had he been, in Brisbane? What work had he done? Who exactly had taught him at Sydney, and who had he kept company with? What was the nature of his relationship with Jack Lindsay? What was it about his milieu which had enabled him to practise as a marxist in the period of the thirties without falling 108

Irske bronzeøkser fra Ulstrup

This article re-examines the ‘neolithic revolution’—Gordon Childe’s great contribution to prehistoric archaeology. Childe first articulated his model of three revolutions in history—neolithic, urban and industrial—in 1936. Many authors have sought to understand it in the light of subsequent archaeological theory; here I proceed differently. A broader appreciation of the context in which Childe operated, in Britain and the rest of Europe, is necessary if we are to grasp fully the content of his model and the theoretical strands that influenced it. This article aims to elucidate the Neolithic as a historical construct and Childe’s archaeology as a continuation of his politics. The facts are viewed from four perspectives: (a) personal, with biographical information about the young Gordon Childe; (b) institutional, through a description of the 1920s research landscape in London; (c) ideological, through an attempt to retrace the European Weltanschauung; and (d) conceptual, with a discussion of the ‘neolithic revolution’. Childe’s love-hate relationship with Germany and Austria heavily influenced his model, which is essentially a grand synthesis between the Kulturkreislehre (of Grabner) and the Dreistufenlehre (probably of Karl Bucher, through its critique by the Functionalists in London). The model’s revolutionary structure comes from dialectical materialism. All three main building blocks of the ‘neolithic revolution’—diffusionist, evolutionist and Marxist—ultimately derive from the great nineteenth century German historical tradition. An anti-fascist his entire life, Childe tried to rescue German ideas in face of the impending catastrophe—Hitler’s arrival to power, and the destruction of Central European intellectual traditions.

On 17 September 1918 in the N.S.W. Legislative Assembly Mr. T. J. Smith raised for the second time that week1 the refusal of the Senate of the University of Sydney to sanction the appointment to the position of tutor in ancient history of Mr. V. Gordon Childe, despite the fact that this appointment had been recommended by a joint committee of the staff and the W.E.A. It was pointed out that Childe's academic record could hardly be at fault; after graduating from Sydney University he had gone to Oxford on a Graduate Scholarship in Classics in 1914. At Queen's College he had read Greats and obtained a First, and subsequently a B.Litt., on the subject of Indo-European archaeology. In 1916 Childe had returned to Australia and had been active in the anti-conscription activities of that period as a member of the Australian Union of Democratic Control. That Childe held political opinions not recognised as orthodox. Smith suggested, was the reason for the action of the Senate. The ensuing exchange with the Minister for Public Instruction swung to the age-old question of government control in institutions supported financially by the State. As was to be expected, the Minister declined to act.

Foundations of Social Archaeology: Selected Writings of V. Gordon Childe:Foundations of Social Archaeology: Selected Writings of V. Gordon Childe

Only Gordon Childe's death sufficed to alert Australians to his international reputation. His private return after an absence of 35 years was unlikely to be newsworthy, given Australia's intellectual climate and regional isolation in 1957. 1 was totally unaware of Child's return in April, or of his visits to universities in Sydney and Canberra, despite the fact that it was in that year that I initiated Australia's only course in the prehistory of this region. This was Pacific Prehistory, a final honours year course at Melbourne University's History Department.

Nancy Sandars was among the first group of students to be taught by Gordon Childe after he left Edinburgh, where he had been the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology, to become the first full-time Director of the Institute of Archaeology in 1946. The Institute was then housed in St John's Lodge in Regent's Park. She recalls those early days with affection, and describes how Childe interacted with his students.

An obituary for Professor V Gordon Childe.

This article aims to provide an initial analysis of the early connections between Christopher Hawkes and Spanish archaeology in the context of his participation in two of the international summer courses in Ampurias in 1947 and 1950. The documentation used for this article comes mainly from the Pericot Archive in the Library of Catalonia, in which there are 43 letters from Hawkes to Pericot between 1940 and 1975. In addition, other correspondence in the British Museum and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be mentioned. This study forms part of a larger project of recovering the memory of twentieth-century British-Spanish relations, of which a first phase has centred on the assessment of Gordon Childe’s contacts with Spain (Diaz-Andreu 1998; forthcoming–a; forthcoming–b). As in Gordon Childe’s case, all memory of Hawkes’ visits, and indeed of his relationships with Spanish archaeologists, has since been lost. Unfortunately, this situation is not exceptional: most of the links between Spanish archaeologists and British and American archaeologists in the twenty years around the Spanish Civil War have dropped out of archaeological memory. To the names mentioned in a recent seminar (Gordon Childe, Edward Thurlow Leeds, Eoin MacWhite, Hubert Savory) (Armada Pita 2006), many others could be added. As this article will show, however, there were many contacts and these help to explain some developments in the archaeological thinking and practice of the participants involved in these exchanges, as well as some events in the international organisation of archaeology.

The Most Ancient East: The Oriental Prelude to European Prehistory. By V. Gordon Childe, B.Litt, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in Edinburgh University. 9 × 5½. Pp. xv + 258, 24 plates, map, and 86 figures. London: Kegan Paul, 1928. 15s. - Volume 9 Issue 2

It all started in Sydney. This is no mere Sydney-sider's chauvinism. If the institutional pursuit of classical or Near Eastern archaeology began anywhere in Australia, it was begun by two men: A.D. Trendall and J.R. Stewart. Individually, they created two strands of scholarship, Classical and Near Eastern respectively, which on the one hand established Australia-based archaeological scholarship for the first time in an international field, and on the other, started an academic tradition which has since expanded far beyond the pseudo- Gothic halls of Australia's earliest university. The more familiar tradition of Australians making their name overseas may have been famously personified by V. Gordon Childe - another Sydney alumnus - in London in the 1940s, but this was not an academic trail that was to produce future Australian scholars. Universities are old-fashioned in the way that scholarship is transmitted. Master and apprentice, professor and postgraduate: for all the disadvantages and nepotism that often accompany it, this is a generational inheritance, and success can be gauged as much by the strength of an established flow of archaeologists as by the output of a single, world-class scholar. What follows, then, is a very abbreviated history of the institutional development of the archaeology of the Classical and Near Eastern cultures within Australia. The story of the wider, public interest in archaeology has been told in parts elsewhere (see, for example, Merrillees, 1 990). If this history centres upon Sydney University, it is only because that institution neatly encapsulates wider trends; and if the work of any Near Eastern or Classical archaeologists has been overlooked in this attempt to summarise the great diversity of research by Australian scholars in the twentieth century and beyond, it is a result of dumb oversight rather than intentional slight by the author.

HistoryVolume 18, Issue 71 p. 193-203 RACES, PEOPLES AND CULTURES IN PREHISTORIC EUROPE V. Gordon Childe, Search for more papers by this author V. Gordon Childe, Search for more papers by this author First published: October 1933 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1933.tb01773.xCitations: 9AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume18, Issue71October 1933Pages 193-203 RelatedInformation

V. Gordon Childe was the first scholar to attempt a broad and sustained socioeconomic analysis of the archaeology of the ancient world in terms that, today, could be called explanatory. To most, he was remembered only as a diligent synthesizer whose whole interpretation collapsed when its chronology was demolished. There was little recognition of his insistence that the emergence of craft specialists, and their very variable roles in the relations of production, were crucial to an understanding of social evolution. The interrelationship between sociopolitical complexity and craft production is a critical one, so critical that one might ask, just how complex would any society have become without craft specialization. This volume derives from the papers presented at a symposium at the American Anthropological Association meetings on the centenary of Childe's birth. Contributors to the volume include David W. Anthony, Philip J. Arnold III, Bennet Bronson, Robert Chapman, John E. Clark, Cathy L. Costin, Pam J. Crabtree, Philip L. Kohl, D. Blair Gibson, Antonio Gilman, Vincent C. Piggott, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Gil J. Stein, Ruth Tringham, Anne P. Underhill, Bernard Wailes, Peter S. Wells, Joyce C. White, Rita P. Wright, and Richard L. Zettler. Symposium Series Volume VI University Museum Monograph, 93

The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe: Contemporary Perspectives. David R. Harris, editor. Proceedings of the V Gordon Childe Centennial Conference held at the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, May 8–9, 1992, under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology and the Prehistoric Society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994. xii + 148 pp., plates, references, index. ’42.00 (cloth). - Volume 60 Issue 3

American AnthropologistVolume 59, Issue 6 p. 1120-1122 Free Access ARCHEOLOGY: Contributions to Prehistoric Archaeology (Offered to Professor V. Gordon Childe in Honor of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday). Grahame Clark Robert W. Ehrich, Robert W. Ehrich Brooklyn CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Robert W. Ehrich, Robert W. Ehrich Brooklyn CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1957 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1957.59.6.02a00470AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume59, Issue6December 1957Pages 1120-1122 RelatedInformation