Gordon Childe and the British School of Diffusionism

Maxime BramiSchool of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology,

University of Liverpool

05 February 2014

Vere Gordon Childe

1892-1957

Grafton Elliot Smith

1871-1937

Bronisław Malinowski1884-1942

I. GORDON CHILDE’S NEOLITHIC ‘REVOLUTION’ (AND ITS DIFFUSION)

The Terms of the Problem

Neolithic Stage in the evolution of mankind Food-producing society; i.e. plant-cultivating and/or stock-breeding

Revolution Analogy drawn from the “Industrial Revolution”

New means of productionCumulative process with a point of no

returnNOT a single catastrophic change or event (≠1789 French Revolution; 1917 Soviet Revolution, etc.)

“The first revolution that transformed human economy gave man control over his own food supply”

(Childe 1936, 74-75)

NeolithicDomestication

Settled village life

PotteryPolished stone tools

StorageDemographic uptick

Long-distance exchange networks

Land clearance

Social complexity

Symbolic change

Shift in consumer habits

Secondary products

ENTANGLED!

“Anything between 6000 BC and AD 1800” (Childe 1936, 98)

No assumed contemporaneity of Neolithic cultures in different parts of the world (homotaxis)

E.g. Near East: ca 9000 BC cal. British Isles: ca 4000 BC cal. Australia and New Zealand: ca AD 1800

Only one Neolithic ‘revolution’? Near Eastern ‘heartland’ of plant and animal domestication. Elsewhere the Neolithic brought ‘fully-fledged’.

Source: adapted from Purugganan & Fuller 2009

2500-2000 BC

8000-7000 BC

3000 BC

2500 BC

9000 BC 7000 BC

Multiple centres of food-plant domestication

EvolutionismHuman progress

Diffusionism Spatial division between

food-gatherers and food-producers

MarxismFocus on the means of

production

Gordon Childe’s Neolithic ‘revolution’: origins of the

concept

II. THE RISE AND FALL OF CULTURAL DIFFUSIONISM

19th Century Background

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) Cross-cultural/comparative studies: writing a universal history of mankind Social evolutionism Stage theory – savagery, barbarism, civilization Parallelism of cultures BUT evolution and diffusion are two facets of the same issue

Adolf Fabian (1826-1905) “the psychic unity of mankind”

19th Century Comparative studies

Diffusion and EvolutionL. H. Morgan (1818-1881)E. B. Tylor (1832-1917)

German School‘Migrationist’

F. Ratzel (1844-1904)

American School‘Particularist’F. Boas (1858-

1942)

British School‘Hyperdiffusionist’G. Elliot Smith

(1871-1937)

The three Schools of Diffusionism

German School of Diffusionism

Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904)

The History of Mankind“If the history of the world shows a spread

[...] of civilization throughout the earth, the natural numerical preponderance existing among civilized folk is an important factor therein. The people who increase the more quickly pour out their surplus upon the others, and thus the influence of the higher culture [...] gets spontaneously the upper hand”

(Ratzel 1896, 13)

American School of Diffusionism

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

The Mind of Primitive Man“First of all, we must bear in mind that none

of these civilizations was the product of the genius of a single people. Ideas and inventions were carried from one to the other; and, although intercommunication was slow, each people which participated in the ancient development contributed its share to the general progress”

(Boas 1911[1938], 7)

British School of Diffusionism

Grafton Elliot Smith (1871-1937)

The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization“[...] I provoked the first of the many onslaughts

predicted by Dr. Rivers by claiming that the sporadic distribution of megalithic monuments west and east of Egypt, as far as the British Isles on one side, and as far as Japan and America on the other, was due to the influence, directly or indirectly, of Egyptian civilization. Small groups of people, moving mainly by sea, settled at certain places and there made rude imitations of the Egyptian monuments of the Pyramid Age”

(Smith 1923, viii-ix)

Grafton Elliot Smith Single origin of

culture“one man in one particular place”

Influence of higher civilisations (i.e. Egypt) on their neighbours

Diffusion

Contact

Bronisław Malinowski Multiplicity of

processes of invention(human creative originality)

“No idea and no object can exist in isolation from its cultural context”

Transformation and readaptation

Context

1927 Culture: The Diffusion Controversy

Gordon Childe’s “moderate” diffusionism

Social Evolution

“Diffusion is not an automatic process, like infection with a disease. One society can borrow an idea – a technical invention, a political motive – only when it fits into the general pattern of the society’s culture – in other words, when that society has evolved to a stage which allows of the acceptance of the idea”.

(Childe 1951, 172)

Contact and Context!

III. FOOD-GATHERERS AND FOOD-PRODUCERS

The legacy of Grafton Elliot Smith

Man Makes Himself

“So in 1925, adopting an idea advanced by Elliot Smith ten years earlier, from the three current criteria (polishing of stone, or modern fauna, or domestic animals and cultivated plants) I selected ‘food-production’ as distinguishing the Neolithic from the earlier Palaeolithic and Mesolithic”

(Childe 1951, 22)

Elliot Smith on the Neolithic transition

Agriculture as the foundation of civilization

The world is divided between food-gatherers, who live at the expense of nature, and food-producers, who create their own means of subsistence

Constituent components of the Neolithic pattern of existence are functionally related

Diffusion is the (main) mechanism of expansion of the Neolithic

The Australian Connection

Human History

“The food-gatherers live[d] mainly on the outskirts of the world, far from the great centre of civilization. In some cases they occup[ied] countries, such as Australia […]”

(Smith 1930, 197)

Incentives behind agricultural expansion

Elliot Smith: the search for precious metals (i.e. gold)

Gordon Childe: the search for arable lands (i.e. shifting cultivation)

BUT early agriculture was small-scale and intensive!

Why did farming spread to Europe?

Source: Gronenborn 2007

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Neolithic sites in Anatolia and Southeast Europe

I thank my supervisors, Douglas Baird, David Shankland and John Gowlett.

This project was supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg.