The Invention of Prehistory and the Rediscovery of Europe: Exploring the Intellectual Roots of Gordon Childe’s ‘Neolithic Revolution’ (1936)

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 Gräbner) and the Dreistufenlehre (probably of Karl Bücher, 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.