V. Gordon Childe

V. Gordon Childe
Vere Gordon Childe in the 1930s
Born	Vere Gordon Childe (1892-04-14)14 April 1892 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died	19 October 1957(1957-10-19) (aged 65) Blackheath, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Archaeologist Philologist
Known for	Excavating Skara Brae Marxist archaeological theory

Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 1892 – 19 October 1957), better known as V. Gordon Childe, was an Australian archaeologist and philologist who specialized in the study of European prehistory. Working most of his life as an academic in the United Kingdom for the University of Edinburgh and then the Institute of Archaeology, London, he wrote twenty-six books and was an early proponent of culture-historical archaeology and Marxist archaeology.

Born in Sydney, New South Wales to a middle-class family of English descent, Childe studied Classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to study Classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. Here, he embraced the socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War, viewing it as a conflict waged by competing imperialists to the detriment of Europe's working class. Returning to Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his socialist activism, instead working for the Australian Labor Party as the private secretary of politician John Storey. Growing critical of Labor, he authored an analysis of their policies and joined the far-left Industrial Workers of the World. Emigrating to London in 1921, he became librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute and continued his research into European prehistory through various journeys across the continent, publishing his findings in academic papers and books. In doing so he introduced the continental European concept of an archaeological culture to the British archaeological community.