Vere Gordon Childe
1892-1957)
Born in Sydney, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957) became one of the greatest archaeologists of his day (Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University, 1927-46 and Professor of European archaeology at the University of London, 1946-56), but from 1916-19 Childe was involved in the labour movement and from 1919-21 he was private secretary to the NSW Australian Labor Party leader John Storey. He was initially influenced politically by GDH Cole, and later became a Marxist. From his 1930 work, The Bronze Age, onward, Marxism informs his approach to archaeology and the study of history. He returned to Australia in 1957 and died soon after in a fall near Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He had written shortly before that his life's work was complete, and in a letter to a colleague, WF Grimes, which he requested not be opened until 1968, he said that he intended to take his own life: “Life ends best when it is happy and strong.”
Works
1923 How Labor Governs
1930 The Bronze Age
1944 The story of tools
1942 The Significance of Soviet Arch�ology, Labour Monthly
1949 Magic, craftsmanship and science