Skara Brae: a Pictish village in Orkney

by Vere Gordon Childe

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Vere Gordon Childe, better known as V. Gordon Childe, was an Australian archaeologist and philologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. A vocal socialist, Childe accepted the socio-economic theory of Marxism and was an early, though unorthodox, proponent of Marxist archaeology. Childe worked for most of his life as an academic in the United Kingdom, initially at the University of Edinburgh, and later at the Institute of Archaeology, London. He also wrote a number of groundbreaking books on the subject of archaeology and prehistory, most notably Man Makes Himself (1936) and What Happened in History (1942).

Reviews

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the 1950 edition of this official guide to the site, which happened to be in my university's library collection. It's aimed at visitors but gives clear details, including a nice map of the site and section diagrams, for those who aren't there but need to refresh the memory or imagine it. The modern equivalent probably has more recent findings and other updates - for example, Childe describes the islands as treeless, which is true today but doesn't, as I understand it, match the pollen records for the time of the Skara Brae village.