Childe, Malinowski and Rivers: how ethnographic research in the Western Pacific influenced...
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 24/02/2023

Maxime Brami (University of Mainz)

The histories of archaeology and anthropology are closely intertwined. This seminar will 
address the historical background to Gordon Childe’s Neolithic ‘revolution’ (1936), 
highlighting the aspects that were influenced by Bronisław Malinowski’s functional school of 
anthropology on the one hand, and by William H. R. Rivers’ British school of diffusionism on 
the other.

Malinowski’s ethnographic study of agricultural practices among Melanesian tribes in New 
Guinea (1914-1920) appears to have exerted some influence on Childe, at the time when he 
was writing on the Neolithic. In Man Makes Himself, the uncapitalized adjective ‘neolithic’ 
refers to a stage of economic production, which can be any time anywhere, as long as food 
production is present and no superior mode of production is interfering. For instance, the arrival 
of British colonists and industrially-produced objects in Australia and New Zealand c. AD 
1800, was described by Childe as disrupting local ‘neolithic’ economies. Childe’s conception 
of a world that was once spatially divided between food-producers and food-gatherers, who 
sometimes ‘occupied’ continents, such as Australia, can likewise be traced back to early 20th 
century anthropological literature, such as Elliot Smith’s Human History (1930) and Rivers’ 
History of Melanesian Society (1914). 

As a keen advocate of Indian independence, who abhorred British rule in India, Childe can 
hardly be accused of colonialism. Yet his model of three revolutions in history – neolithic, 
urban and industrial – reflects concerns and attitudes that are frown upon today. Understanding 
this legacy is essential if we are to continue using concepts such as the Neolithic ‘revolution’.