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Board of Trustees, Boston University
V. Gordon Childe 25 Years after: His Relevance for the Archaeology of the Eighties
Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe by Sally Green; The Method and Theory of
V. Gordon Childe by Barbara McNairn; Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology by Bruce
Trigger
Review by: Ruth Tringham
Journal of Field Archaeology,
Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), pp. 85-100
Published by: Boston University
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V. Gordon
Childe 25 Years
After: His Relevance
for the Archaeology of the Eighties
Ruth
Tringham A Review Article
University of California at Berkeley
This
is a review
article of three
monographs
published
recently
about
V. Gordon
Childe, who was Europe's
most eminent
prehistorian
from 1925-
1957. The
article draws
attention
to the
fact that there
seems, especially
in
Great
Britain, to be a re-emergence
of Childe's
popularity
after a relative
inattention
in the
last 20 years. There
is a possible
explanation
of this
phenome-
non as part of the reactionary
trend
of European,
and especially
British,
ar-
chaeology
to the American
New Archaeology
and as part of the development
of strongly
history-oriented
theoretical
models
of social and economic
change. The
article
focusses on the theoretical
and
philosophical
background
to Childe's
writings,
especially on his ideas of progress, historical
theory,
and his use of historical
materialist
models of prehistoric
cultural
change.
Sally Green, Prehistorian.
a Biography
of V. Gordon
Childe
(Moonraker
Press: Wiltshire, England 1981; distributed in the U.S.A. by Humanities
Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey) 200 pages. $22.50. Referred to in
the text as "Green: Childe". Barbara
McNairn, The
Method
and Theory
of V.
Gordon
Childe
(Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh 1980; Columbia Uni-
versity Press 1980) 184 pages. $10.00. Referred to in the text as "Mc-
Nairn: Childe". Bruce Trigger, Gordon
Childe:
Revolutions
in Archaeology
(Thames and Hudson Ltd.: London 1980; Columbia University Press: New
York 1980) 207 pages, 33 plates. $22.50. Referred to in the text as
"Trigger: Childe".
V. Gordon Childe's Major Works Referred To in the Text During his lifetime, V. Gordon Childe (FIG. 1) gained
How Labour Governs (Labour Publishing Co.: London 1923) the reputation of being the leading prehistorian in Eu-
The Dawn of European Civilization (Kegan, Trench, Trubner rope. At his death in 1957, he received more tributes
and Co.: London 1925) than any other archaeologist before him (and perhaps
The Aryans (Kegan, Trench, Trubner and Co.: London 1926) more than any since) from archaeologists, historians, and
The Most Ancient East (Kegan, Trench, Trubner
and Co.: Lon- . . . .
don 1928) soclal sclentlsts throughout the world. Wlthout excep-
The Danube in Prehistory (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1929) tion, these observed that Childe was the greatest prehis-
The Bronze Age (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge 1930) torian and a wonderful human being.
New Light on the Most Ancient East (Kegan, Trench, Trubner Childe's reputation, as far as his fellow archaeologists
and Co.: London 1934) and orehlstorlans were concerned, was founded on hls
Man Makes Himself (Watts and Co.: London 1936) . X
What Happened in History (Pelican Books: London 1942) first-hand
knowledge and experience with archaeological
Progress and Archaeology (Watts and Co.: London 1945) material in museums and sites all over Europe-espe-
Scotland Before the Scots (Methuen and Co.: London 1946) cially Eastern
Europe and the USSR-and the Near East.
History (Cobbett Press: London 1947) Moreover, Childe was familiar with a vast amount of
' 'The Sociology of Knowledge, " The Modern Quarterly NS:IV the published
literature
regarding
these sites and was able
(l949) 302-309 consequently to draw all this material together into mas-
Prehlstoric Mlgrations in Europe (Kegan, Trench, Trubner & '
Co.: London 1950) terly syntheses which enabled other archaeologists to
Social Evolution (The Rationalist Press Association, Watts & grasp the patterns of European and Near Eastern prehis-
Co.: London 1951) toric change and variation.
No one had travelled
as widely
Society and Knowledge (Harper & Brothers: New York 1956) as he, nor had anyone (it seems) read so many of the
Piecing Together the Past (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London
1956) orlglnal excavatlon reports. No one could remember the
''Retrospect," Antiquity 32 (1958) 69-74 details as he could and yet still distinguish the woods
''Valediction," Bulletin of the London Institute of Archaeology from the trees.
I (1958) 1-8 Childe's reputation as the master of his field was es-
The Prehisrory of Earopean Society (Penguin Books: London tablished from the very beginning of his professional
career, with the publication of the first edition of The
86 V. Gordon Childe:
His Relevance for the Archaeology of the EightieslTringham
Figure 1. V. Gordon Childe holding a
present from some of his students at
Brno University. Date unknown. (Pic-
ture supplied by the Institute of Archae-
ology, University of London.)
Dawn of European Civilization in 1925. In fact, it might
be said that he took the archaeological world by storm.
During his lifetime, his vast, complex, cultural-chrono-
logical schema and his functional interpretations went,
for the most part, unchallenged and were, moreover,
accepted as the synthetic framework of European pre-
history and its chronological connections with the Near
East.
In contrast to his "technical works" of synthesis (such
as the six editions of the Dawn and the Danube in Pre-
history), Childe's
works of an interpretational nature, in
which he postulated
grand models for the social and cul-
tural evolution of Europe and the Near East such as Man
Makes Himself and What Happened in History, were
regarded by his archaeological colleagues as "popular-
izations" of the serious business of prehistory. They
seemed, moreover, vaguely embarassing
because of their
overtly Marxist connotations, and were never
considered
part
of his serious intellectual repertoire. Nor
did Childe's
highly philosophical and theoretical works on the nature
of history and knowledge and explanation
receive any
closer attention or discussion by contemporary archae-
ologists. It was left to Childe himself at the end of his
life to summarize what he saw as his most important
contribution to archaeology and knowledge
in general.
Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 87
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 interpreta-
tive concepts and methods of explanation. '
It must have been a disappointment to Childe that,
while he was alive, the modelling and reconstruction of
socio-cultural evolution that most appealed to him were
the subject of such little active dialogue among his col-
leagues within the discipline, compared to the details and
nuances of chronological and cultural synthesis in which
they delighted.
After the spate of literature on Childe at his death,2
less was written about his works than one might have
expected, considering his worldwide reputation. Grad-
ually, with the carbon-14 dating of European prehistory
and improvements in its use, parts of Childe's cultural-
chronological framework were pulled down; finally, the
whole structure of his model for the diffusion of inno-
vations from the Near East to Europe, which had bound
together his synthetic framework, came under heavy
attack. 3
As Trigger has remarked ''there is a tendency for his
ideas to be invoked or condemned piecemeal, as they
relate to current controversies."4 Thus, Childe's ten in-
dices of urbanism have been systematically challenged
and pared down;5 his ''Oasis Hypothesis" for the intro-
1. V. G. Childe, "Retrospect,'' Antiquity 32 (1958) 69.
2. R. Braidwood, "Vere Gordon Childe, 1892-1957," AmAnth 60
(1958) 733-736; H. J. Case, ''V. Gordon Childe,'' The Times (1957,
13 October) 13; S . Cruden, " Memorial of Professor V . Gordon
Childe," Proc. Soc. of Antiquaries for Scotland 90 (1957) 258; R.
Palme Dutt, ''Professor V. Gordon Childe," The Times (1957, 24
October); J. Morris, ''Gordon Childe,'' Past and Present 12 (1957)
2; D. J. Mulvaney, ''V. G. Childe, 1892-1957," Historical Studies:
Australia and New Zealand 8 (1957) 93-94; Stuart Piggott, ''Vere
Gordon Childe, 1892-1957," ProcBritAc 44 (1958) 305-312; Alison
Ravetz, ''Notes on the work of V. Gordon Childe," The New Rea-
soner 10 (1959) 56-66; I. Rouse, "Vere Gordon Childe, 1892-1957,"
AmAnt 24 (1958) 82-84; M. Wheeler, ''Prof. V. Gordon Childe:
robust influence in study of the Past," The Times (1957, 23 October);
Trigger: Childe 11.
3. A. C. Renfrew, Before Civilization (Jonathan
Cape: London 1973).
4. Trigger: Childe 11.
5. V. G. Childe, ''The Urban Revolution," The Town Planning Re-
view 21: 1 (1950) 3- 17; C. Redman, The Rise of Civilization (Freeman
and Co.: San Francisco 1978) 218; A. C. Renfrew, ''Beyond a sub-
sistence economy: the evolution of social organization in prehistoric
Europe," in C. Moore, ed., Reconstructing Complex Societies (ASOR:
Baltimore 1974) 69-96.
duction of agriculture and domestication of animals6 has
been placed in the ranks of implausible theories for the
Neolithic Revolution.7
Gordon Childe was seen as a great synthesizer of data;
but now that the data have outgrown his syntheses, they
have been superseded. His interpretational
models have
been regarded as either refuted or untestable. V. Gordon
Childe and his works have been relegated to the history
of the discipline and, as such, are generally regarded as
irrelevant to current developments in research into the
evolution of human culture and society.
And yet, in the last two years, three full-scale mon-
ographs have appeared
that deal exclusively with the life
and works of V. Gordon Childe by Barbara McNairn,
Bruce Trigger, and Sally Green. In fact they are part of
a new "let-us-know-Childe-better"
movement which has
been growing during the last five to 10 years. Green's
manuscript
was finished in 1976, and Trigger's was writ-
ten in 1977-1978. In addition there are articles and un-
published manuscripts by at least two others.8 How does
one explain this relatively sudden interest in Gordon
Childe after a 15-20 year silence? Does it represent an
interest in the history of archaeology in which now, 20
years after his death, it is time to take an "objective"
look at the great man? Does it, perhaps, represent a
reaction to the constant
pounding which some of his ideas
have taken during the '70s,9 in what may be called a
morbid fascination for details of the victim? Or is it pos-
sible that the work of V. Gordon Childe has acquired
some significance and relevance at this point in time for
the development of archaeology and the study of prehis-
toric cultural evolution?
The initial aim of this article is to review these three
monographs about Gordon Childe, but its ultimate pur-
-
pose is to explain the phenomenon of their coincidental
appearance and to offer some answers to the questions
posed in the preceding paragraph.
The three monographs each have a different orienta-
tion and are remarkably
unrepetitive. It is worth reading
all three, since each has something new and significant
6. V . G . Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East (Kegan, Trench,
Trubner & Co.: London 1934).
7. Redman, op. cit. (in note 5) 93; G. Wright, ''Origins of Food-
Production in southwest Asia: a survey of ideas," CA 12 (1971) 447-
477.
8. P. Gathercole, ''Patterns in Prehistory: an examination of the later
thinking of V. Gordon Childe," WA 3 (1971) 225-232; P. Gathercole,
''Childe the 'Outsider'," RAIN 17 (1976) 5-6; see Trigger: Childe
11.
9. Renfrew, op. cit. (in notes 3 and 5).
88 V. Gordon
Childe:
His Relevance for the Archaeology
of the EightieslTringham
to offer about Childe's life and his works. After reading
each book, one is left with a different impression of V.
Gordon Childe. This phenomenon is certainly one result
of the different intellectual and philosophical background
of each author. Bruce Trigger is a well-known and highly
respected archaeologist in his own right, who has written
a number of works on the history and methodology of
archaeology. 10
The other two authors, Barbara
McNairn
and Sally Green, are unknown to me. The complimen-
tary nature of the manuscripts may not have been acci-
dental, at least in the case of Trigger and Green, since
Trigger was certainly aware of the nature of Green's
manuscript. 1 1
Green did not know, however, about Trig-
ger's manuscript (at least as far as one can tell from her
citations). Neither Trigger nor Green makes any mention
of McNairn's book, apart from a passing reference to it
without citation in Green's book.12 All three were aware
of the work written about Childe by Peter Gathercole,
and make regular reference to it.
Green's book, which I shall discuss first, is different
from the other two books and from Gathercole's work
in that it is essentially a personal biography. Trigger's
book, on the other hand, may be termed an intellectual
biography, and McNairn's book is an extended essay on
his interpretational
and theoretical works. These latter
two will be discussed together, since there is more over-
lap between them than with Green, especially in those
aspects dealing with the nature of Childe's theory of
prehistory and history, which is currently of great sig-
nificance for archaeology.
The personal biography by Sally Green is organized
chronologically and is based on a thorough investigation
of Childe's travels and activities and his social, intellec-
tual and political relations, using as sources letters, re-
membered conversations, notebooks, and publications,
including those about and by Childe in the most obscure
newspapers and journals. From this, Sally Green has
created a fascinating and enterprising reconstruction of
the personal background to Childe's works. Discussion
of Childe's wntings is interspersed
in the text and, though
perfectly adequate in giving intellectual substance to the
personal details, it is somewhat superficial when com-
pared to the discussions in the other two volumes.
10. B. Trigger, "Major concepts of Archaeology in Historical Per-
specive," Man 3 (1968) 527; B. Trigger, Time and Traditions: Essays
in Archaeological Interpretation (Edinburgh University Press: Edin-
burgh 1978); B. Trigger, ''Aims in Prehistoric Archaeology,'' Antiq-
uity 44 (1970) 26-37.
1
1. Trigger: Childe 1 1.
12. Green: Childe 130.
Two of Childe's works are published in full in Green's
book: his last message of recommendations for future
practitioners of archaeology which was published as
"Valediction" in 1958 and is republished in Green's
book as an appendix; and a "letter" written by Childe
but only very recently published in Antiquity. 13 This let-
ter was written by Childe shortly before his death and
was sent to Professor W.F. Grimes, at the Institute of
Archaeology in London, but was not opened until 1968;
in it Childe outlines his fears of old age, on the basis of
which most of his readers, including Green, have been
confirmed in their conclusion that he committed suicide.
It is on the poignant note of this letter that Green
finishes her biography of Childe, having described his
post-retirement depression and its possible causes. By
the end of the book, the reader is also depressed and
saddened by her vivid painting of Childe, as he escaped
from his inhibitions against making intimate friendships
by plunging himself into intellectual and political (in its
widest sense) activities, including the writing of 22 books
in 32 years! I would certainly agree with Jack Lindsay,
the eminent ancient
historian
and friend of Gordon
Childe,
who writes in his Foreword to Sally Green's book:
There is much
that is new to me in Sally Green's
account.
I feel that I would have understood
Childe better if I had
known what she tells of his childhood and boyhood.
The
man as he developed emerges clearly from her nar-
rative. . . .14
The detailed account of how Childe changed from ac-
tive politics in Australia and London to a full-time career
in archaeology is certainly little known to archaeologists
and helps to set in perspective the nature
of Childe's first
works, the Dawn, the Danube, and the Aryans. Green
describes first his unhappy childhood and then his grow-
ing tendency towards the Left, especially after he went
to Oxford to take a second degree during the First World
War and came into contact with R. Palme Dutt and other
adamant Socialists. He returned to Australia hoping to
secure a job teaching Classics and Ancient Philology,
which had been the disciplines in which he had taken
his degree, but had constant difficulties because of, ac-
cording to Green, the prejudice against his Leftist politics
and status as a Conscientious Objector during the War.
She traces in great detail how Childe then turned to po-
13. V. G. Childe, "Letter to W. F. Grimes, 1957," quoted in G.
Daniel "Editorial," Antiquity 54 (1980) 2-3.
14. Lindsay in Green: Childe ix.
Journal of Field ArchaeologytMol. 10, 1983 89
litics and obtained
a job working for the Labour Party
of Australia and wrote
his first book How Labour Gov-
erns on the basis of his experience working
in politics
and his disillusionment
with Australian
Parliamentary
party politics. The Labour Party formed
a government
in New South Wales and Gordon Childe
was chosen to
be the "personal
agent" of the Premier
of New South
Wales, John Storey, in London. Storey, however, died
in 1921 when Childe
was en route to London
to take up
his position. Thus
he arrived in London
with a job that
had ceased to exist. What Green stresses
is that at this
point, although he had no job, he did not want to leave
London and return
to Australia. Moreover,
"Childe was
still hoping to continue
his career in politics, though the
study of past societies continued to fascinate
him and
occupy much of his time.''ls
Until 1925 Childe
found part-time jobs, mostly con-
nected with politics. During this time he spent a good
deal of time reading
and traveling throughout
Europe to
visit museums and archaeological sites. Finally in 1925
he obtained a full-time
job as a professional
archaeolo-
gistS as librarian
of the Royal Anthropological
Institute
in London. With the publication of the Dawn and the
Aryans and the establishment
of his reputation
as a syn-
thesizers he was offered
in 1927 the position
of the first
Abercromby Chair of Prehistoric Archaeology
at the
University of Edinburgh.
It was at this point that he
finally became committed
to a professional
career in
archaeology.
The value of Green's personal biography
of Childe
can be grasped in this summary of her detailed
descrip-
tion of this period
in his life, a highly significant
"turn-
ing-point''. It is especially clear when compared with
Trigger's superficial
treatment of the same "turning-
point' ' .
When Storey died in 1921 Childe found himself without a
job and was unable to secure a university post, apparently
because of his political activities. After a further brief spell
of government employment, he again found himself out of
work and in London. His thoughts now turned to a career
in archaeology.l6
Trigger thus sees, apart from certain discrepancies
in
timing, Childe's activities
from 1921 as a deliberate cul-
tivation of a career
in archaeology. Green,
on the other
hand, sees Childe's
vocation from 1921 to 1925 as more
ambiguous.
His Communist friend R. Paime Dutt later explained Childe's
choice:
lS. Green: Childe 41.
16. Trigger: Childe 34.
. . . he wrote to me that
he would have chosen
revolu-
tionary politics but he found the price too high, and that
he preferred what he termed
the bios apolausticos
(flesh-
pots) of professional status.l7
Although Childe no doubt was not entirely serious
when he said this, this quotation from R. Paime Dutt
nevertheless
reflects an important
characteristic
that sets
Childe
apart from most other archaeologists, in that he
was a highly political person;
he was aware of the world
about him, felt strongly about political issues, and,
throughout
his career, incorporated
these feelings into
his choice of what he wrote and where he published
it.
For
Gordon Childe, archaeology
and prehistory
were not
an ivory tower into which one escaped from the cares,
dirt, and unpleasantness
of the current world. He pub-
lished his interpretational
works on the social and cul-
tural
evolution of Europe
and the Near East, such as
Whut
Happened in History, with publishing houses
where
they would have a wide distribution, not to popularize
them in a debasing way, but because he genuinely
be-
lieved that it was his social responsibility to do so in
order
to disseminate knowledge.
18 There is no doubt
that
this attitude of political
awareness, which sets him apart
in archaeology, also sets apart the nature of his interpre-
tations
and his theory of history. It certainly set him apart
philosophically
and psychologically
from his colleagues
in archaeology.
Bruce Trigger's biography
keeps to a minimum
the
personal
details of Childe's
life but, when read
in con-
junction
with Green's biographyS
its dry, intellectual
text
is brought to life so that together they provide
a vivid
picture
of V. Gordon
Childe, the mind and the man.
Trigger's
book is explicitly
not a personal biography,
but
focusses on the development
of Childe's thought
over
his entire career:
. . . not on Childe's intexpretations
of specific archaeolog-
ical data, but on the ideas
that shaped these interpretations.
19
Following
Childe's own idea of cultural evolution,
Trig-
ger traces the evolution
of Childe's thought in a multi-
linear fashion. Thus the book is arranged roughly
chronologically,
starting
with the Dawn and ending
with
The Prehistory of European Society. At the same time,
however, Trigger recognizes
that there were a number
of trends that continued
and evolved throughout
Childe's
archaeological
career from his prewar and wartime
ten-
ure of the Abercromby
Chair at the University
of Edin-
17. R. Palme Dutt quoted in Green: Childe 57.
18 Green: Childe 98.
19. Trigger: Childe 12.
90 V. Gordon
Childe:
His Relevance
for the Archaeology
of the EightieslTringham
burgh
to his postwar
tenure
of the Directorship
and
Chair
of Prehistoric
Archaeology
at the Institute of Archaeol-
ogy in London.
These trends
are expressed
as a series
of themes
which
each form
the subject of a chapter.
The
chapter
on "Prehistoric
Economics'' (Ch.IV) encom-
passes Childe's publications
in the late '20s and early
'30s the
Danube
in Prehistory,
The
Most
Ancient
East,
The Bronze Age. The chapter
on "Scottish Archaeol-
ogy" (Ch.V)
discusses
Childe's
excursions
into
field ar-
chaeology
while he was the
Abercromby
Professor
(1928-
46). The chapter
on "Human Progress
and Decline''
(Ch.VI)
focusses
on the important
phase
of Childe's life
in the '30s and early '40s when he was writing his his-
torical
materialist
works
on the rise and fall of civiliza-
tion in Europe
and the Near East:
Man Makes
Himself,
New Light
on the
Most
Ancient
East, What
Happened in
History,
and
Progress
and
Archaeology.
The chapter on
''Archaeology and Scientific History'' focusses on
Childe's earliest years at the Institute of Archaeology
immediately
after
the Second World
War, and his the-
oretical
contribution to the theory of history:
History.
Chapter
VIII on "The Prehistory of Science" chrono-
logically overlaps both Chapters VI and VII, but fo-
cusses on an article entitled ''The Sociology of
Knowledge''
and
Society
and Knowledge.
The final the-
matic
chapter
in Trigger's
book (Ch.IX) is entitled
"So-
cietal Archaeology"
and deals especially
with Childe's
post-war
publications
on the evolution of society in Eu-
rope
and
the
Near
East:
Social
Evolution,
Scotland
before
the
Scots,
Prehistoric
Migrations
in Europe,
and the
Pre-
history of European
Society.
Included
with the text is a delightful
selection of pho-
tographs,
which are
largely
irrelevant
to Trigger's
book,
but which might
have been included
very appropriately
in Green's
book, which, apart
from the dustcover,
has
no illustrations.
The
Method
and Theory
of V. Gordon
Childe by Bar-
bara
McNairn
has no pretensions
of being a biography.
It is a long essay, arranged
thematically,
which aims at
redressing
the lack of attention
given to Childe's inter-
pretational,
theoretical,
and philosophical
works.20
There
are
five themes
around
which
these works
are
discussed
after an initial chapter
discussing his syntheses of the
prehistoric
data from Europe
and the Near East. The
themes,
each
of which is discussed in a separate
chapter,
are "The Concept
of Culture", "The Functional-Eco-
nomic Interpretation of the Three Ages'', "Historical
Theory",
"The
Philosophical
Background",
and "Childe
and
Marxism''.
Although
there is a good deal of overlap
between the
themes that are discussed by McNairn
and those dis-
cussed by Trigger, the completely non-chrononological
treatment of Childe's works by McNairn means that there
is very little correlation between the contents of the dif-
ferent chapters of Trigger's book and those of Mc-
Nairn's. From this point of view, there is little sense of
repetition when reading the two books.
McNairn's book relies heavily on long quotations from
Childe's works, which, surprisingly, do not detract from
the continuity
of the text. They are especially useful when
cited from his more obscure journal articles and books.
Even the most ardent Childe-fan has probably not read
more than half of his 22 books or 225 articles,2l so that
it is valuable to have some of his original texts available.
In addition, McNairn's book is characterized by de-
tailed discussions of the historical background
to the gen-
eral themes covered by Childe's works, and how concepts
such as "culture'', "economics'', and so on were used
at the time when Childe was writing. This is especially
valuable and somewhat missed in the two more strictly
biographical treatments. Thus, for example, McNairn's
discussion of dialectics and historical materialism is the
only such discussion in these three monographs
on Childe.
Trigger, in fact, explicitly avoids any discussion of this
subject.22 As we shall see, however, an understanding
of this subject is an essential prerequisite to grasping
Childe's view of history and the world.
There are certain themes in Childe's works, most of
which have been mentioned in the above summaries of
the three monographs, which provide the foundation for
understanding the relevance of Gordon Childe for current
archaeological research.
First among these, introduced into recent archaeolog-
ical literature by Colin Renfrew,23 is Childe's use of
diffusion as a model to explicate, if not to explain, change
and variation, which formed the foundation concept for
his syntheses of European and Near Eastern archaeolog-
ical data, such as the six editions of the Dawn and the
Danube in Prehistory. All three authors
discuss at length
Childe's part in the controversy as to whether European
civilization grew up as a result of diffusion of innova-
tions from the Near East (the Orientalist "school" based
on the syntheses of Montelius) or from the west and
north of Europe (the Occidentalist "school" inspired by
the works of Gustaf
Kossinna) .24 In
this controversy
Childe
21. A complete bibliography of Childe's works, including those writ-
ten since Isobel Smith's original compilation (Smith, ''Bibliography
of the publications of Professor V. Gordon Childe," ProcPS 21 [1955]
295-304) is published as Appendix II of Green: Childe.
22. Trigger: Childe 7.
23. Renfrew, op. cit. (in note 3).
24. McNairn: Childe 30-45; Trigger: Childe 44-49; Green: Childe
53.
20. McNairn: Childe 3.
Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 91
was the master
of compromise.
Recognizing
in varying
degrees during
his career
the creativity
of Europe,
he
abhorred
the abuse
of the Occidental
model by Kossina
and
Hitler
in supporting
the idea
of Aryan
racial
suprem-
acy, and in general
assumed
that most inventions
and
cultural
stimuli
in Europe
originated
in the Near
East.
Two points
should
be emphasised
here. The first
one,
which is brought
out in all three monographs
and has
been discussed
at length by Colin Renfrew,
is that the
Orientalist
diffusionary
model was an essential
assump-
tion if ''. . . prehistoric
Europe
was to be dated
at all
2s
. . . .
Until the discovery
of radiocarbon
dating . . . there was
really
only one reliable
way of dating
events in European
prehistory
after
the end of the last glaciation
. . . This was
by the early records
of the great civilizations,
which ex-
tended
in some cases as far back
as 3000 B.C.26
The model of diffusion
and its corollary,
the zoning
of
Europe
into concentric
areas
with increasingly
retarded
rates
of the adoption
of innovations
radiating
out from
the Near
East, allowed
the construction
of a chronolog-
ical framework
for Europe
based on absolute
dates and
producing
the so-called
"short
chronology''
of European
prehistory.27
This chronological
framework
was never-
theless
constructed
on highly
unstable
foundations,
a fact
that
Childe
was well-
aware
Of.
28
The second point is that
the controversy
between
the
Occidentalists
and
the Orientalists,
which
tends
to dom-
inate
Childe's
early
"technical"
works
such
as the
Dawn,
the Danube, The Aryans, and, to a certain
extent, The
Bronze Age, is very different
from a controversy
that
later
played a much more significant
role in his recon-
struction
of European
prehistory that is, the contro-
versy over the relative role of external agents (by
diffusion) and internal agents in promoting cultural
change
.
29
This
latter
controversy
represents
essentially
a conflict
between,
on the one hand, Childe's
use of a traditional
model of change
that had been developed
in European
archaeology
from
the l9th century
and
earlier
and
which
must
have
been an integral
part
of his university
training
and, on the other
hand, an explanation
of change
pro-
vided by Marxist
dialectical
models of historical
mate-
rialism, which he acquired from non-archaeological
25. Renfrew, op. cit. (in note 3) 32.
26. Ibid. 27.
27. Trigger: Childe 120; McNairn: Childe 31; Green: Childe 91.
28. Trigger: Childe 165.
29. Trigger: Childe 76, 96; McNairn: Childe 27, 106.
sources.
The controversy
between
the Occidentalists
and
the Orientalists,
on the other hand, as Trigger
points
out,30
was one that
raged
between
the proponents
of dif-
ferent
sources
of stimulus
for change;
but both of these
"
schools'
' maintained
that
the mechanism
of change
was
diffusion.
One
of the philosophical
foundations
of Childe's
world
view, and one which is not inconsistent
with either
his
diffusionary
model
of ex Oriente
lux
or his Marxist
model
of historical
materialism,
is an underlying
acceptance
of
the concept of progress.3l
Both Trigger
and McNairn
draw attention
to the fact that the concept of progress
pervades
Childe's work throughout
his career
and that
this puts him well within
the tradition
of the Enlighten-
ment, Victorian evolutionists, and Marxists.32
For
McNairn,
however,
The concept
of "progress''
as of "decline" is not a scien-
tific
but
a metaphysical
concept. . . . from
a scientific
point
of view nothing
is added
or subtracted
by calling
a particular
trend
progressive
or retrogressive.33
She
thus
stresses
that
a faith
in scientific
knowledge
rather
than
in the concept
of "progress''
provided
a more
sig-
nificant
philosophical
background
to Childe's
intellectual
works
and
his life.34
Trigger
links Childe's
treatment
of
"progress'' at different times in his career with his
changing
pessimism
or optimism
for the current
and
fu-
ture world situation, and thereby implicitly accepts
Childe's
concept
of "progress''
as a metaphysical
one.
I feel that, in this respect, both Trigger
and McNairn
have missed
an important
point
of Childe's
philosophy.
That
is, at least
by the early 1930s, Childe
was drawing
on historical
materialism
as a general
model of change
and
the principle
of dialectics
to explain
change;
accord-
ingly, his concept
of "progress''
is not metaphysical;
it
is a scientific concept based on rigorous
validation
by
the observation
of real
phenomena.
In the historical
ma-
terialist
model
of change,
developed
by Marx
and
Marx-
ists, the scientific
concept
of "progress''
is embodied
in
the principles
of dialectics, among which are the con-
stancy
of change, the accumulation
of innovations,
and
the antagonism
between progressive
and conservative
elements
as a source
of energy
for change;
but the prin-
ciples of dialectics
maintains
that
change
is always
pro-
30. Trigger: Childe 55.
31. Ibid. 54.
32. Ibid.; McNairn: Childe 106.
33. McNairn: Childe 108.
34. Ibid. 134.
92 V. Gordon
Childe:
His Relevance
for the Archaeology
of the Eighties/Tringham
gressive (that is, going towards
a new quality), never
regressive
(returning to a former
quality).35
Thus Childe, as a practitioner
of historical
material-
ism, knew that
optimism-is
no more a realistic
attitude
than pessimism. Neither is relevant
to his concept of
"progress'
' .
To ask "have we progressed" is of course
meaningless-
the question
can only be answered in the affirmative.
It is
for history to say what
this progress
has consisted in and to
provide
standards
for determining
it.36
The following
year, Childe
elaborated
on this role of the
historian.
It is unscientific to ask "Have we progressed?''.... But
it may be legitimate to ask, "What is progress?''
and here
the answer
may take on something of the numerical
form
that science so rightly
prizes. But now progress
becomes
what has actually
happened the content
of history. The
business
of the historian
would be to bring
about
the essen-
tial and
significant
in the long and
complex
series
of events
with which he is confronted.37
These statements
do not make sense if taken from the
point
of view of the traditional
metaphysical
concept of
"progress''
with its connotations
of working
towards an
ideal state
of "good' ' or "civilization' ' . McNairn's re-
action
to the above passage
from Childe shows a sense
of confusion
with it.
. . . what Childe
ended up with was not so much an ob-
jective
definition of progress
but
rather a concept
of progress
stripped
of all its connotations of advancement or improve-
ment. It is thus interesting
that he was unable
to abandon
the concept
entirely.38
Childe's
concept of "progress''
was stripped
not of its
"connotations
of advancement or improvement",
but of
its metaphysical
nature,
and embodies a historical
ma-
terialist
model of change. He could never have aban-
doned the concept of ''progress'' entirely or even
partially,
since it clearly played an integral
role in his
basic philosophy of the evolution
of society. In fact in
35. Sidney Pollard, The Idea of Progress (Penguin: London 1971)
126-136.
36. V. G. Childe, ''Changing Methods and Aims in Prehistory: Pres-
idential Address for 1935," ProcPS 1 (1935) 1-15.
37. V. G. Childe, Man Makes Alimself (Watts and Co.: London 1936)
4.
38. McNairn: Childe 108.
his volume
History
Childe
expressed
the hope that
his-
tory and archaeology
would help create a "science of
progress" .
Childe's
interest in the history of knowledge
and sci-
ence represents
essentially
an extension
of his basic
phil-
osophical concept of ''progress'' as the primary
intellectual
force behind
his works
and life. It does not
represent the moving force as suggested
by McNairn39,
nor is it merely
a separate
theme in his investigations,
as suggested
by Trigger.40
Childe was concerned
with
the problem
of how to measure
"progress''
in the ar-
chaeological
and
historical
record.
He forcefully
rejected
cultural
relativism in suggesting
that there are certain
trends
and
features in human
society that are more
pro-
gressive on an absolute scale.41
These trends revolve
around
knowledge,
especially
scientific
knowledge
and
consciousness.
He (Childe) suggested that progress may be objectively de-
fined as what is cumulative in the archaeological record
. To arrive at this conclusion, however, he had to equate
progress with scientific knowledge . . 42
"Knowledge", wrote
Childe, "must be communica-
ble and
in that
sense
public
and
also useful''.43
Any other
knowledge for him was "false''. Thus "true knowl-
edge'' is "an ideal
reproduction
of the world
serviceable
for co-operative
action
thereon''.44
It follows that:
There can be only one test of truth as thus defined, only
one criterion by which to decide whether a conceptual re-
production does in fact correspond to the external world.
That is action.45
The role of a "Science of Progress"
was to use archae-
ological and historical
data to reconstruct
the complex
path by which "true knowledge" had accumulated
through
the progressive
ups and downs of social trans-
formation in the millennia
of human
existence.46
Childe's explication
and explanation
of the mecha-
nisms by which
human
society
progressed
uses the meth-
39. Ibid. ch. 5.
40. Trigger: Childe ch. 8.
41. Ibid. 140; McNairn: Childe 107.
42. Trigger: Childe 1
17-1 18.
43. V. G. Childe, Society and Knowledge (Harper and Brothers: New
York 1956) 4.
44. Ibid. 54.
45. Ibid. 107.
46. Ibid. 1; Trigger: Childe 130.
Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol
. 10, 1983 93
odology of scientific history, in particular
that of historical
materialism. Childe's historical method and theory are
the subject of specific chapters in both Trigger's and
McNairn's books,47
and focus on Childe's treatise on this
topic History.
A general observation should be made in connection
with Childe's historical methodology. First of all, it is
probably fair to say that most archaeologists, let alone
historians, are not familiar with Childe's treatise History
and his numerous articles on historical methodology and
the nature of causality. As a result of this ignorance
and lack of familiarity with these and other theoretical
and interpretational
works, Childe has been vastly under-
estimated as an archaeological and historical theoreti-
cian, especially in North America, where theoretical
discussions of the kind that Childe most enjoyed to write
have dominated archaeology in the last 20 years. There
are three main points in which this underestimation
and
misunderstanding
of Childe are especially clear.
The first is that, unlike many prehistoric archaeolo-
gists and historians, Childe insisted that it was not logical
to make a dichotomy between history and prehistory,48
and likewise between science and history or prehistory.49
Childe saw history as a scientific discipline, especially
when combined with archaeology, which dealt with cul-
tures as the main unit of analysis rather
than individuals,
and with trends rather than events. For Childe,
good history had to be based on explicit generalizations
about human behaviour, but specific generalizations were
not necessarily relevant outside of particular
socio-economic
contexts. Because it attempted to specify these contexts and
to relate them to one another, scientific history became the
keystone of the social sciences.... Childe saw historical
disciplines as being scientific in that they sought to explain
events not simply in terms of common sense, but as indi-
vidual, and perhaps unique conjectures of general and fa-
miliar processes and patterns.50
Whether
one looks at Childe's last works or those from
early on in his career, his statements on history and caus-
ality have a remarkable relevance for current archaeo-
logical thought. In his last message to the archaeological
world he wrote:
A prehistorian, like any other historian, should aim not only
to describe, but also to explain; historical description should
be at the same time explanatory. But the historian has to
47. Trigger: Childe ch. 7; McNairn: Childe ch. 4.
48. Trigger: Childe 110, 14.
49. Ibid. 128.
50. Ibid. 134.
explain
the individual
and possibly
unique
event. Uniformi-
ties of behavior
just will not do .51
And in 1936 he wrote
for wider
distribution:
It is an old-fashioned
sort of history that
is made
up entirely
of kings
and battles
to the exclusion
of scientific
discoveries
and social conditions.
And so it would
be an old-fashioned
prehistory
that regarded
it as its sole function
to trace
mi-
grations
and to locate the cradle of peoples. History
has
recently
become much less political.... and more cul-
tural. That is the true meaning
of what is miscalled the
materialist
conception
of history. . . . it puts in the fore-
ground changes in economic organization
and scientific
discoveries.52
Neither
Trigger
nor
McNairn
mentions
that
what
Childe
was expressing
in his statements
on historical
method-
ology was fully in line with the New Historians,
who
from the late 1920s included
not only Historical
Mate-
rialists, but also others such as historians
of the "An-
nalistes
School" in Paris, e.g., Marc
Bloc and
Fernand
Braudel.
Childe has been virtually
ignored by the American
New Archaeologists
because
of his adherence
to a his-
torical
framework;
he is thus
declared
particularistic
and
irrelevant
to the search
for general
laws of human
be-
havior. It is clear, however, that the history, or rather
prehistory,
that
Childe
practiced
was very different
from
"history"
as understood
by the
New Archaeologists,
and
anything
but "particularistic''.53
This brings me to the second point about Childe's
historical
methodology:
the nature
of causality.
First of
all, Childe's
view of causality
was obviously
very dif-
ferent from that of the traditional
preshistorians
who
comprised
his intellectual
ancestors
and colleagues. If
there
were
any
patterns
or explanatory
laws at all in their
interpretation
of the archaeological
data, these
comprised
such
concepts
as unilinear
progress
towards
civilization,
or cyclical laws of the rise and fall of civilizations,
but
in general
there is no explicit statement
as to general
paradigm,
and
one must
assume
that
the law of free will
(or God's will) dominated
their
reconstructions.
On the other
hand,
as both
Trigger
and
McNairn
have
rightly
pointed
out, the nature
of causality,
as conceived
by Childe, differs from that of the majority
of social
scientists
in Europe
and
America,
among
whom
may be
51. V. G. Childe, ''Valediction,'' Bulletin of the London Institute of
Archaeology I (1958) 6.
52. Childe, op. cit. (in note 36) 9-10.
53. I. Walker, ''Binford, Science and History," in R. Schuyler, ed.,
Historical Archaeology (Bayward Publ. Co.: Farmingdale, N.Y. 1978)
223-239.
94 V. Gordon
Childe: His Relevance for the Archaeology
of the EightieslTringham
numbered
the American
New Archaeologists.s4 In his
summary of Childe's conception of the nature of caus-
ality, Trigger writes:
. . . as a Marxist Childe believed that human nature was
not static, but that it tended to change as society itself was
transformed.
Thus, by the time he published
History in 1947,
he had ceased to believe in the existence of transcendental
laws that governed human behavior any time and anywhere.
He adhered to an overall approach to the study of cultural
change that was grounded in materialism and a dialectical
mode of analysis. Hence he continued to believe in certain
general laws of history such as the primacy of social rela-
tions of production, the periodic development of conflicts
between the forces and relations of production and revolu-
tions that adjusted these relations. On the other hand he
regarded
most explanations of human behavior as being valid
only for societies that shared a particular mode of produc-
tion, and thus were at the same stage of development. For
example, he considered that the laws of traditional political
economy that had been designed to explain industrial soci-
eties could not be used to explain behaviour in other types
of societies, or even major processes of related historical
transformation. Historians must utilize a broader range of
laws to explain such changes.55
This is in contrast to the aim of the more conventional
social scientists, including
the American
New Archae-
ologists, who assume (in varying
degrees) that human
nature is fixed, and that the aim is to find universally
valid laws of human
behaviour,
transcending the details
of historical
and socio-economic
context.S6
These state-
ments make nonsense of the conclusion to which some
archaeologists have come: that there
was a conflict be-
tween Childe
the humanist-historian
and Childe the so-
cialist-Marxist-historical
materialist,
or between Childe
the particularist and Childe the generalist.S7
There was
no conflict!
This discussion of Childe's concept of the nature of
causality
leads on to the third point about
his historical
methodology,
that
is, his concept of the nature and ex-
planation of change. This is closely connected to the
issue that
dominates,
if only in the background, the three
monographs
about
Childe
and is an issue that certainly
surrounded
the work of Gordon
Childe while he was
alive-"the great
puzzle of Childe at all times was to
what
extent
he was a Marxist".58 Put
a little
more
within
the framework of what has
been said
above,
this
question
54. Trigger: Childe 131, 176; McNairn: Childe 73.
55. Trigger: Childe 131.
56. Ibid. 177.
57. Rouse, op. cit. (in note 2).
58. G. Daniel, ''Editorial,'' Antiquity 32 (1958) 66.
might be rephrased: "To what extent was the historical
method and theory of Gordon Childe based on the prin-
ciples of historical materialism?"
The sequence of Childe's reading and his introduction
to the theory of dialectical and historical materialism is
not at all well known, nor is it discussed in his biogra-
phies. It would be fascinating to know, for example,
whether he had read Plekhanov or Pokrovski on histor-
ical materialism before he wrote The Most Ancient East
or The Bronze Age. Both of these would seem to be
experiments on his part with historical materialism, and
both are written just before the earliest deliberate appli-
cation of historical materialism to archaeological data in
the Soviet Union.59 It is possible that he had done little
formal reading on the topic of historical materialism, but
had begun to pick up its main principles from reading
Das Kapital, from his conversations with Marxist his-
torians, and from his experiences with politics and po-
litical history. There is no doubt in my mind, however,
that by the late 1930s he had been reading extensively
on the theory of historical materialism and that its prin-
ciples were deeply embedded in his works. Childe's his-
torical materialism, however, has the drawback that it is
not at all explicit, especially in those works such as Man
Makes Himself, in which it is applied to the archaeolog-
ical data. This lack of self-consciousness of methodology
tends to lead to inconsistencies
in its application
by Childe
and certainly led to an underestimation of his use of
historical materialism by his colleagues in archaeology.
In Retrospect, it seems likely that Childe had been aware
of these shortcomings and did not consider that he had
really applied the principles of historical materialism un-
til his works during the Second World War.
McNairn correctly points out that
During Childe's lifetime British archaeologists on the whole
were largely unacquainted with the principles of Marxism
(historical
materialism R.E.T.), seeing it primarily as po-
litical dogma rather than a historical model. Even today it
is often represented as a crude mechanistic materialism.60
The implicit or explicit correlations between Marxist
principles and political dogma lead most archaeologists
who discuss Childe, including the authors of these three
monographs, to spend an inordinate amount of space
discussing Childe's connection with Soviet archaeolo-
gists and comparing Childe's historical materialism to
the application of historical materialism in the Soviet
59. M. Miller, Archaeology in the
U.S.S.R.
(Atlantic Press: London
1956) 80.
60. McNairn: Childe 161.
Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol
. 10, 1983 95
Union.61 In my opinion, most of the statements made
about Childe and the Soviet Union are essentially a red
herring. There is little evidence to show that the main
stimulus for the development of Childe's use of historical
materialism in the late 1930s came from the Soviet Union,
or that the historical materialism practiced by archaeol-
ogists there provided any kind of model for Childe's.
The historical materialism practiced since 1930 by So-
viet archaeologists is itself varied, depending on the the-
oretical knowledge and synthesizing skill of the
researcher. Not a single Soviet archaeologist, however,
has ever attempted to write an interpretational
synthesis
that equalled the scope and skill of Gordon Childe's mas-
terpieces. The explanation for this, and the use of
historical materialism in Soviet archaeology is,
unfortunately, beyond the scope of this article. Saville,
quoted in McNairn, notes that a similar situation exists
in Soviet historical studies.62
It should, however, be remembered that, until very
recently, Gordon Childe was the only archaeologist who
had ever attempted to write an interpretational
synthesis
of European and Near Eastern prehistory using the prin-
ciples of historical materialism. In many ways, the lack
of popularity of historical materialism in archaeological
research is amazing in light of the materialism inherent
in the study of archaeological data (which Childe himself
noted),63 and the logical acceptability of the principles
of dialectics. Its lack of popularity must be explained by
ignorance, and by its association, on the one hand, with
unilinear schemes of human social evolution64
which be-
came fossilized in the hands of its adherents, and, on the
other hand, with non- (even anti-) establishment politics
in West Europe and America.
To understand Childe's historical materialism, it is
more constructive to do as McNairn has done and go
back to its basic principles as expounded by various phi-
losophers and historians starting with Marx: dialectics,
materialism, historical transforrnations.
In both McNairn's long discussion and Trigger's short
notes on Marxist theory and historical materialism and
Childe's use of it, it is clear that they are at a disadvan-
tage, compared to Childe himself, in not having used
these principles in their own archaeological research.65
61. G. Daniel, ''A Defence of Prehistory,''
The Cambridge Journal
3 (1949) 131-147; idem, op. cit. (in note 58) 65-68; J. G. D. Clark,
''Prehistory since Childe," Bulletin of the London Institute of Ar-
chaeology 13 (1976) 1-21.
62. J. Saville, Marxism
in History (Hull 1974) 5.
63. Childe, op. cit. (in note 51) 8.
64. E.g., F. Engles, The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and
the State (1884).
65. McNairn: Childe
ch. 6; Trigger: Childe
ch. 6.
Trigger, in fact, states explicitly that
A lack of knowledge of eastern European languages, and of
the intricacies of the history of Marxist philosophy, pre-
cludes an in-depth study of the relationship of Childe's ideas
to Soviet archaeology and Marxism.66
Both authors
quote heavily from the works of Ravetz
and Gathercole, who have made detailed studies of
Childe's Marxism.67
In discussing
Childe's historical
materialism, there are
two main aspects.
The first is the nature
and explanation
of change which, in historical materialist
terms, means
a discussion of the principles of dialectics
and the inter-
nal contradictions
between the different
components of
the social system. The second concerns
the nature of the
components themselves,
the mode of production, social
organization (sociology) and ideology, and the interplay
between them.
It has been suggested68 that Childe
did not make use
of the principles
of dialectics in his historical material-
ism, even though
he accepted the other main character-
istic of historical
materialism: the priority of the mode
of production
as "an explanation for the form taken by
the sociology and ideology."69 McNairn
in fact goes so
far as to say that "Childe did not philosophise on the
problem of change
in any depth."70
The principles
of dialectics and dialectical
materialism
are summarized
by McNairn7l and may briefly be reca-
pitulated here. They propose that every material phe-
nomenon, which may as easily be social relation as
technical product,
contains within
itself opposite trends
of progression
and conservation;
between these trends
there is, on the one hand, a dynamic
unity and on the
other hand, constant
antagonism.
This antagonism pro-
duces the energy that activates a transformation of the
phenomenon from
its old form or quality
to its new form
or quality. Thus
each phenomenon
contains within itself
the seeds of the destruction of its old quality and, at the
same time, the birth of its new quality.
This process of
transformation
comprises a phase of constant but gradual
changes, alternating
with rapid transformational
leaps into
the new quality
(revolution): nothing
is fixed or static.
The changes are
progressive; there
is no retrogression;
moreover the progress is cumulative.
66. Trigger: Childe 7.
67. Ravetz, op. cit. (in note 2); Gathercole, op. cit. (in note 8).
68. McNairn: Childe 134, 158.
69. Ibid. 150.
70. Ibid. 134.
71. Ibid. 152.
96 V. Gordon
Childe: His Relevance
for the Archaeology
of the EightieslTringham
Thus the essentials of dialectics include constant
change, the antagonism within and between components
being resolved by their transformation
into a new quality
which is nevertheless based on the old, and the progres-
sive and cumulative nature of change. There is no doubt
from the discussion earlier in this article about Childe's
philosophy of progress and from his interpretations of
prehistory as seen, for example, in Man Makes
Himself
and What
Happened
in History that Childe thought of
the process of social and cultural evolution as a dialec-
tical one. In these volumes, for example, his model of
ideology as turning from a progressive and positive mo-
tivation for the creation of urban centers into a conserv-
ative element that held back the means of production or
diverted it into unproductive redistribution indicates
clearly a deliberate attempt to put prehistoric reconstruc-
tion into a framework of dialectical change. In looking
at the many other instances of this kind in his interpre-
tational works it is clear that this was no random adoption
of a dialectical model but the utilization of this model
as a general theory of change. The main problem, as
Trigger and McNairn point out, is that he was not ex-
plicit about his utilization of a dialectical
model of change.
There is, however, one series of works in which he
is, in fact, explicit about the nature and explanation of
the process of change: the monograph and articles on the
concept of "progress" described earlier in this article. I
concluded earlier that Childe's concept of "progress"
was expressing in fact the same process of dialectical
change conceived of by historical
materialists,
which was
very different from the metaphysical nature of "prog-
ress" as traditionally conceived by non-Marxists. It is
possible that Childe, in constantly stressing the role of
"progress" in his interpretational
and theoretical works,
was attempting to express the principles of historical ma-
terialism in terms that would be familiar and acceptable
to his West European
audience while avoiding the jargon
of dialectical materialism.
It has been stressed in all three monographs under
discussion and in much of the other literature
about Childe
that he must have experienced a conflict between his
model of internal social and cultural change following
the principles of historical materialism and his model of
diffusion or external stimuli as the main agent of culture
change. Both McNairn and Trigger, however, point out,
as did Childe, that the internal transformation of culture
according to historical materialist
principles or according
to any other model of cultural
evolution does not exclude
the diffusion of innovations nor its importance in culture
change.72 According to a historical materialist model,
material phenomena which enter a social system from
outside
are subject
to the same dialectical
processes
as
those within
the society. Thus innovations that are dif-
fused
to a society from
somewhere
else must be consid-
ered within
the context of the process of the resolution
of contradictions
within and between the various
com-
ponents
of that society; they cannot be separated
from
the internally
evolving processes.
Thus as both Gordon
Childe and Colin Renfrew
have pointed
out, diffusion
does not explain
change,73
it is a mechanism
by which
the material
relations
of one society come into contact
with those of another. No society exists in a vacuum,
and a historical
materialist
model denies, just as a sys-
tems model does, the existence of closed systems and
the completely
internal
evolution
of a society.
Childe is much
more
explicit
concerning his adoption
of the main analytical
components
of historical
materi-
alism the
priority
of the
mode of production of material
life in transforming
society and, within the "mode of
production",
the role of the social relations of produc-
tion to constrain (or, as Childe
puts it, to determine
but
not cause) the form of transformations in the means of
production.74
His adoption
of these components
is clear,
if not
explicit,
as early as the
writing of The Most Ancient
East and The Bronze Age. It is implied,
however, in his
view of "economics";
Childe
defined "economics" in
a much
wider sense than
most of his European
archae-
ological colleagues
to include not only the strategies
of
getting
food and
producing
surpluses, but
also the social
relations within and between societies by which re-
sources
were
procured,
produced,
and
redistibuted.
Both
Trigger
and McNairn
point out that Childe's
interest
in
economics
was never
directed
towards the "ecological"
or "geographical
school" which was established in the
late 1920s and 1930s as a significant
trend in British
archaeology.75
Unlike
the archaeologists of this "school",
Childe
did not consider that
the concept
of "adaptation
to the environment"
was useful unless the "environ-
ment" included
among its significant
elements
the "so-
cial environment".76
Childe's sentiment
is summed
up
magnificently
in his reaction,
quoted by Clark
himself,
to the book
Prehistoric Europe the Economic Basis by
Grahame
Clark, a leading
developer of the "ecological"
and "bioarchaeological"
approach:
Yes, Grahame, but what have you done about Society?77
73. Renfrew, op. cit. (in note 3) 121;
Childe,
Social Evolution 167.
74. V. G. Childe, ''Prehistory
and Marxism,"
Antiquity 53 (1979)
93-95.
75. Trigger:
Childe 171;
McNairn:
Childe 162.
76. Trigger:
Childe 172;
McNairn: Childe
73.
77. Gordon
Childe
quoted in J. G. D. Clark, ''Prehistoric
Europe:
72. Ibid. 131; Trigger: Childe 102; Childe, op. cit. (in note 51) 154.
Journal of Field ArchaeologytWol.
10, 1983 97
It is important to note that Childe's first experiments
with the historical materialist approach are in his early
interpretational works dealing with change within the
early urban societies of the Near East, in which he was
able to supplement the archaeological data with infor-
mation from ancient written sources. It is in these vol-
umes that he developed his model of social and cultural
change in which he did not have to invoke an outside
stimulus as the principal factor of change.78
Childe gained his reputation for his cultural-chrono-
logical framework
and syntheses of European
prehistory,
and he thought of himself as a European archaeologist.
His models for change in European prehistory are, how-
ever, (with a few exceptions) uninspiring and frustrat-
ingly simplistic compared to the sophistication of his
models for Near Eastern prehistory and protohistory.
There is no doubt that he was helped in developing these
latter models by the work of historians using the ancient
records, which gave him a direct route to a rich store of
ideas to explain change.79 In interpreting the European
prehistoric data his creativity in model-building was re-
stricted by the absence of any such written records, and
by Childe's limited knowledge of the range of possible
behavior patterns among small-scale (pre-class) soci-
eties. This was, as Trigger points out, because of his
lack of familiarity with the ethnographic literature.80
By the 1950s, Childe himself was clearly becoming
increasingly depressed and pessimistic about the validity
of his interpretational
models of culture change.8' His
strategy of research was a combination of induction and
deduction,82
but the deductive process of validating his
models with the appropriate
archaeological
data may fairly
be regarded
as the weakest part of his research, and must
have been the source of much of his frustration
with the
data.
Childe made relatively few explicit statements about
his method of organizing the data and drawing conclu-
sions from them. This, in the tradition of European ar-
chaeological literature
of his times, was not at all unusual,
in contrast
to the highly self-conscious literature
of meth-
odology of the American New Archaeology. It is the
explicit nature
of his statements on theory that is unusual
for Childe's times. One can gather from reading his
works, however, that Childe went very little beyond the
traditional repertoire of data classification available to
him in European archaeology. Trigger makes some at-
tempt to reconstruct Childe's use of the primary data,
for example his typological classification.83 It is surpris-
ing, therefore, that his discussion of the one major con-
tbution ffiat
Childe made to archaeological
meffiodology,
Piecing Together the Past, is quite minimal compared to
that of Green and McNairn.84
Childe himself was aware
of these shortcomings in his manipulation of the archae-
ological data, his tools for the validation of his models.
He warned, for example, against drawing conclusions of
similarity on the basis of casual resemblances, and men-
tioned the limitations in the use of the type-fossil and
the need for quantification.85
The one innovative contribution that Childe made to
the method of the manipulation of archaeological data is
in his use of the concept of "culture" and in his clas-
sification of the archaeological data into spatio-chrono-
logical units at the level of the archaeological culture.
Both McNairn and Trigger give a relatively full discus-
sion of the significance of Childe's use of the concept
of "culture".86 They describe how, during his archae-
ological career, Childe' s concept changed from one
which, following Kossinna, equated "culture" with "a
people" who had the same language and possibly even
the same physical structure87
to one which is much more
complex and embodies the idea that "culture" is an "ar-
chaeological social unit".88
At certain points in his career, Childe was optimistic
as to the power of archaeological data to answer the kind
of questions in which he was interested.
Under suitable conditions we can learn a great deal about
the mode of production as well as the means of production.
The role of secondary and primary industry and of trade can
be estimated from observed facts. The extent of the division
of labour and the distribution of the product can be inferred
with some confidence. Plausible guesses can be made as to
the existence of slaves, the status of women, and the inher-
itance of property. Even the ideological superstructure
can
be made the subject of cautious hypotheses.89
83. Ibid. 136, 145.
84. Ibid. 164;
McNairn:
Childe
64-73; Green:
Childe 136-138.
85. Trigger:
Childe 163.
86. Trigger:
Childe 40-44; McNairn:
Childe ch. 2; Green:
Childe
136.
87. Childe,
The
Danube
in Prehistory
v-vi.
88. McNairn:
Childe 64; Childe, op. cit. (in note 72) 40; Childe,
Piecing together
the Past 38.
89. Childe,
op. cit. (in note 72) 34.
The Economic Basis," in G. Willey, ed., Archaeological Researches
in Retrospect (Winthrop Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 1974) 55.
78. Trigger: Childe 62; McNairn: Childe 157.
79. Trigger: Childe 1
10.
80. Ibid. 75.
81. Ibid. 165.
82. Ibid. 181.
98 V. Gordon
Childe: His Relevance
for the Archaeology
of the EightieslTringham
But this confidence never took the form of design of
research
to investigate
these questions; it was no more
than wishful thinking, which is reflected in Trigger's
statement:
His unrivalled knowledge of this (European and Near East-
ern archaeological R.E.T.) material facilitated his culture-
historical syntheses, but did not provide a wholly satisfac-
tory basis for his economic studies. Even less did it suffice
to allow him to study prehistoric social organization, sci-
entific knowledge and ideology. His desultory examinations
of settlement pattern data were clearly designed to remedy
this deficiency, but they did not produce methodological
breakthroughs
.90
Childe's
realization
of the reality
of the situation is clear
by the end of his life.
My whole account may prove to be erroneous; my formulae
may be inadequate; my interpretations are perhaps ill-
founded; my chronological framework.... is frankly
shaky . a
91
Many
of these shortcomings
are mentioned
by Childe
in Valediction, his message for future archaeologists,
including
the need for systematic
retrieval
of data
in the
field with interdisciplinary
teams.
This kind of work had
rarely been present in the analytical
repertoire
of ar-
chaeology during
Childe's lifetime. Moreover, he had
been less interested
than most archaeologists
in devel-
oping techniques
of retrieval
and analysis of the data.
Trigger
sums up the situation at the end of Childe's life
as follows.
This book (The Prehistory of European Society R.E.T.)
revealed that the typological skills on which most of Childe's
archaeological analysis had been based did not provide an
adequate foundation for coping with the problems of knowl-
edge and society that were now central to his interests. He
was past the stage when a major reorientation
of his methods
of analysis could be expected. Hence, while The Prehistory
of European Society was a milestone pointing towards some
important
future
developments in archaeology, it also marked
the limits beyond which its author was unable to progress.92
A dialectical
predicament
indeed!
First
and foremost,
Gordon
Childe
was a dreamer, a
story-teller, a model-builder.
From this point of view,
Trigger is right to point to his lack of ethnographic
90. Trigger: Childe 163.
91. Childe, op. cit. (in note 51) 74.
92. Trigger: Childe 167.
knowledge as a serious drawback.93
It should be empha-
sized, however, that this lack restricted Childe in his
formulation of models about pre-class societies. It is in-
correct for Trigger to assume that a greater familiarity
with the ethnographic
literature
would have helped in the
testing and validation of any of Childe's theories.
After building his models, Gordon Childe was not pre-
pared to swing back to the data and verify them, nor
unfortunately were any of his colleagues and students.
In subsequent years, his models that involve diffusion of
innovations into Europe, the Neolithic Revolution and
the Urban Revolution have been partially tested, as men-
tioned above. Very little, however, has been done to
verify or refute his models of social change in Europe.
With the renewed interest in social and economic change
amongst European archaeologists, this situation is be-
. .
glnn1ng to c
nange.
Childe's death coincided with some great revolutions
in the history of archaeology-the general application of
carbon-14 dating, the American New Archaeology with
its explicit emphasis on the rigorous formulation and
testing of hypotheses, the retrieval of data on the early
stages of plant and animal domestication in the Old and
New Worlds, the retrieval of data documenting the ev-
olution of urban centers, and finally the widespread
growth of interest in models of social and economic ev-
olution, including historical materialist models of social
transformations.
Trigger has said that it would have required a major
and impossible reorientation of Childe's thinking and
energies to meet the challenge of these events. Possibly
this is true. It is nevertheless a sad fact that, after reading
the monographs by Green, Trigger, and McNairn, one
is left with the impression that Gordon Childe, as an
archaeologist, was born too early for his times. When
Childe wrote his interpretational
reconstructions
of social
and cultural evolution in the Old World, they made a
great impact with the public at large and those interested
in general history; they received little serious discussion,
however, among his archaeological colleagues. These
same interpretations which were regarded at the time
they were written as popularizations
of more serious and
less speculative archaeological facts are now at the center
of discourse on the evolution of society. Had he lived,
even if he were not able to reorient himself, he certainly
would have enjoyed participating in the milieu of open
dialogue on grand theory and methodology which cur-
rently pervades the discipline of archaeology on both
sides of the Atlantic.
Moreover, I would agree with Trigger that Childe's
interpretational
models of social and cultural evolution
93. Ibid. 1 I.
Journal of Field ArchaeologylVol. 10, 1983 99
have an important
role to play on the American side of
the Atlantic.
. today American archaeology, in spite of its remarkable
accomplishments during the past two decades, is threatened
by a new form of irrelevance. ". . . In Durkheimian terms,
the unity of the New Archaeology is mechanical not or-
ganic".... This has come about as a result of archaeol-
ogists seeking to study in detail isolated aspects of the
archaeological record, either as an exercise in technical or
theoretical
virtuosity, or in order to establish general "laws"
concerning fragments of human behaviour. These disparate
studies threaten archaeology with intellectual as well as so-
cial inconsequence.94
Thus in this powerful statement
Trigger is condemning
the American New Archaeologists for being anti-histor-
ical. He suggests that they should follow Childe's ex-
ample by investigating
problems, such as the development
of social organization,
not by analysing isolated fragments of archaeological data,
but by trying to understand historical sequences of devel-
opment in terms of their social, economic, political and
ecological implications.95
In other words, he suggests that regularities and patterns
of human behavior have to be recognized and explained
in the context of the process of their historical change
through time if they are to have any relevance for our
society and the accumulation of knowledge.
The main theoretical issues that Childe wrote about
are "now more critical to the future of archaeology than
they were when he first raised them". They remained
dormant, ignored, and virtually unknown by the majority
of archaeologists not only during the two decades after
his death, but even during his lifetime. He had no re-
search students at the University of Edinburgh, and none
of those at the Institute of Archaeology took on the bur-
den of Childe's theoretical models nor his stature
of syn-
thesis; no one followed up or tested his interpretations;
the only challenges came to his diffusionary model. For
the American New Archaeologists he has had no rele-
vance. Now finally in Europe and, to a very small extent,
in America, with the rising popularity of structural-
Marxist models in archaeology on the one hand, and of
"social archaeology" on the other, Childe's theoretical
and interpretational
models are being tested, challenged,
and developed.96
Many of these works suffer from the same shortcom-
ings as those of Childe himself-that is, their theoretical
modelling runs ahead of their ability to design research
to test the models. It is in this latter aspect that the Amer-
ican New Archaeology with its emphasis on the rigorous
testing of hypotheses through middle-range analysis is
particularly well equipped.97 One can work towards an
ideal combination, in which Childe's kind of historical
modelling will bring relevance to the American New
Archaeology, and the scientific rigor of the American
New Archaeology will bnng greater credibility to the
speculative theoretical models of socio-economic
evolution.
The three volumes that have been reviewed here have
each in their
own way contibuted to lifting Gordon
Childe
and his archaeological works out of the obscurity of an
august but little studied (and even misunderstood) ances-
tor to a position of current
relevance for the "science of
progress". It is fitting that the re-popularization of his
works is likely to coincide with a theoretical-methodo-
logical revolution in archaeology.
Gordon Childe had modest desires for his immortality:
Society is immortal, but its members are born and die. Hence
any idea accepted by Society and objectified is likewise
immortal. In creating ideas that are accepted, any mortal
member
of Society attains
immortality-yes, though his name
be forgotten as his bodily fonn dissolve. Personally I desire
no more.98
Out of a certain sadness about him as a man and a
mind, the contradiction resolves itself into a new quality
and another new archaeology.99
eds., The Evolution of Social Systems (Duckworth: London 1978); I.
Hodder, "Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view," in I. Hodder,
ed., Symbolic and Structural
Archaeology (Cambridge
University Press:
Cambridge 1982) 1-16; M. Spriggs, ed., Archaeology and Anthro-
pology. BAR 19 (1977).
97. L. Binford, ed., For Theory-Building in Archaeology (Academic
Press: New York 1977).
98. Childe, op. cit. (in note 43) 130.
99. I should like to express my thanks to Tim Kaiser, Mirjana Ste-
vanovic, and Barbara Voytek for their help in reading and revising
the text of this article. The text is, of course, entirely my own
responsibility
.
94. Ibid. 183.
95. Ibid. 183-184.
96. Renfrew, op. cit. (in note 3); A. C. Renfrew, Social Archaeology
(The University: Southampton 1973); J. Friedman & M. Rowlands,
Ruth
Tringham
is Associate
Professor
of Anthropology
at the University
of California
at Berkeley.
She
received
her Ph.D. in 1966 at the University
of
100 V. Gordon
Childe:
His Relevance
for the Archaeology
of the Eighties/Tringham
Edinburgh.
Her research
focusses on the
prehistory
of
eastern
Europe,
especially
the socio-economic
transformations
of early agricultural
societies and the
transition
from a hunting-gathering
to an agricultural
way of life. She is the author
of Hunter, Fishers and
Farmers of Eastern Europe, 6000-3000 b.c.
Hutchinson
University
Press: London
1971). She is at
present
carrying
out
field research
on neolithic
sites in
Yugoslavia.
