Gordon Childe Lectures at the UCL Institute of Archaeology

The Gordon Childe Lectures, organised by the UCL Institute of Archaeology and normally held annually, commenced in 2016. The events are named in honour of Vere Gordon Childe, Director of the Institute from 1946-57.

A black & white image of a man in a suit wearing glasses and smoking a pipe, holding a teddy bear, and leaning against an old-style car

A revolutionary in all senses of the word, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957) pioneered radical new ways of thinking in archaeology and was, during his lifetime, the most cited Australian author in the world.

A committed Marxist, he was placed under investigation by MI5 whilst a student at Oxford. After graduating he became fluent in several languages and published over 250 academic works spanning the prehistory of Europe, Asia and the Near East.

In 1946, he was appointed director of the Institute of Archaeology, London. Upon his retirement in 1957, he returned to the Blue Mountains in Australia, where he ended his life. He remains the most widely read archaeologist of the 20th century.

Image: Prof Gordon Childe displaying a teddy bear, a gift from students at Brno University (Image copyright: UCL Institute of Archaeology)

Thanks to a generous donation, the UCL Institute of Archaeology hosted its first Gordon Childe Lecture and Seminar (previously known as the Annual Lecture) in 2016.

The renaming of the Annual Lecture event signified a revision of its overall aims. The annual Gordon Childe Lecture now features speakers able to take a broad view of their topic and make it interesting and relevant to both the general public as well as subject specialists. The addition of an accompanying seminar also offers an opportunity for extended discussion on the themes raised in the lecture.

Gordon Childe Lecture and Advanced Seminar 2025: 14 & 15 May

This year's Gordon Childe speaker is Professor Liv Nilsson Stutz from Linnaeus University, Sweden, with a lecture entitled 'Piecing Together Past Human Encounters with Death: a theory and practice of the archaeology of death.'

Abstract

How can archaeologists understand the human experience of death in the deep past? More specifically, how can the archaeological record, consisting of fragmented material traces of past people’s actions when faced with death, provide real insights into past lives. The lecture will embrace themes of belief, ritual, cosmology, the dead, emotion, and concepts of body and self.

Drawing on the legacy of Gordon Childe’s contributions to archaeological thought, and with inspiration from his book Piecing Together the Past, this lecture explores a classic archaeological challenge: how can we archaeologically approach human experience beyond the material? Through the example of hunter-gatherer-fisher burials from prehistoric Europe, this lecture explores the potential of asking fundamental but critical questions to build an interpretative framework that allows us to approach these issues. Through a focus on the physical handling of the dead human body – including cremation, inhumation, manipulation, and even mumification – the approach opens a window into past lived experience where death is understood within its context, and in turn provides insights into the hunter-gatherer-fisher world more broadly.

The related Gordon Childe Advanced Seminar takes place the following day with a panel discussion of themes raised in the lecture.