Childe, V(ere) Gordon (1892–1957)

Australian archaeologist. He was an authority on early European and Middle Eastern societies, and pioneered current methods of analytical archaeology. Following his travels in central and eastern Europe, he published The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), which set out a chronological framework for central Europe.

Childe was professor of prehistoric archaeology at Edinburgh University 1927–46 and director of the London Institute of Archaeology 1946–57. His earlier emphasis on economic factors as a cause of social change was revised to take into account Marxist principles and cultural evolution, and his work became the basis for attempts at reconstruction of the social contexts of prehistoric societies. Man Makes Himself (1936) and What Happened in History (1942) were written for the general public as well as professional archaeologists.

He excavated the prehistoric village of Skara Brae in the Orkneys, using ethnographic data to help explain it, and defined civilization for archaeological reconstruction.

Other works include The Aryans (1926), The Most Ancient East (1928), The Danube in Prehistory (1929), New Light on the Most Ancient East (1934), Prehistoric Communities of the British Isles (1940), Scotland before the Scots (1946), Society and Knowledge (1956), and The Prehistory of European Society (1958).