Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (141 page)

A form of social organization characterized by the existence of a chief who exercises central authority at the head of a social hierarchy in which an individual's status is determined by birth and nearness by kinship to the chief. The chief occupies a central role socially, politically, and economically. Characteristically, the chief operates some kind of redistributive system wherein food and/or goods from separate sectors of the chiefdom are brought together and then dispersed according to fixed social rules.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Childe , Gordon Vere
(1892–1957)
[Bi].

Celebrated prehistorian who worked widely in Europe and who is particularly associated with the definition and application of the concept of ‘culture’ in archaeological analysis. Born in North Sydney, Australia, he graduated in Latin, Greek, and philosophy from Sydney University in 1913, developing at the same time good linguistic skills. Growing up alongside the rise of the Australian Labour Party he became a militant socialist. Between 1914 and 1916 Childe studied for a B. Litt. at Queen's College, Oxford, becoming a close friend of Rajani Palme Dutt who was later a leading figure in the British Communist Party. In 1916 Childe returned to Australia and became involved in the anti-conscription movement and Labour politics while supporting himself teaching in a Queensland secondary school and for a time at Sydney University.
After briefly working as a publicity officer in London he abandoned political work in 1922 and resumed his interest in European prehistory, although in 1926 he published his only political book
How Labour governs
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press). From 1925 he was appointed librarian at the Royal Anthropological Institute, a post which allowed him to continue his researches and especially his travels in eastern Europe. Several books were published in this period including
The dawn of European civilization
(1925, London: Routledge) and
The Ayrians
(1926, New York: A. A. Knopf ). In 1927 he joined with archaeologists from the Hungarian National Museum and Cambridge University in excavating the Hungarian Bronze Age site of Toszeg. In the same year he was appointed Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University. By the end of the 1920s he had attained the greatest achievement of his early works, the linking of the idea of an archaeological culture as a device for tracing the history of a particular people with the idea of diffusionism as a means for the spread of ideas and people. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s he applied these ideas locally within the British Isles and to the wider European scene, publishing such key works as
The Danube in prehistory
(1929, Oxford: Clarendon Press),
Prehistory of Scotland
(1935, London: Kegan Paul), and
Prehistoric communities of the British Isles
(1940, London: Chambers). His pursuit of Marxism took him to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1935.
He left Edinburgh in 1946 to became the Director of the Institute of Archaeology at London University, a position he retained until his retirement in 1956. He returned to Australia, seemingly disillusioned in his own ability to devise new ways of carrying forward the Marxist analysis of prehistory. After presenting some lectures and visiting friends, he committed suicide, falling 300m from Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales on the morning of 19 October 1957.
[Bio.: B. Trigger , 1980,
Gordon Childe
. London: Thames & Hudson]

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

A small hot-tasting red pod (Capsicum annum), native to Mexico, the south Andes, and lowland South America. Domesticated in central America by 6000 bc, and coastal Peru by
c.
400 bc.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

A mythological fire-breathing monster with a lion's head, dragon's hind quarters, and a goat's middle. Allegedly once a visitant to Lycia in Asia Minor. The image was often used in forging trading connections between the Middle East and the Far East as it suggested familiarity with oriental decorative motifs.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

A regional tradition of the Late Intermediate Period (ad 1000–1500) in the Moche Valley of Peru. The site of
CHAN CHÁN
, founded in ad 800, became the capital of the Chimú empire. From about ad 1200 the Chimú started taking over other coastal valleys so that at their peak they controlled all the area between Tumbrey in the north and Chancay in the south, a territory over 1000km from end to end. The Chimú were conquered by the Incas in ad 1465.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search