Australian-born British historian whose study of European prehistory in the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC brought his development of the diffusionist theory which was to explain the relationship between Europe and the Middle East. Childe introduced the concept of the archaeological culture. The Diffusionist view interpreted all major developments in prehistoric Europe in terms of the spread of either people or ideas from the Near East. Childe was professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and then director of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. His many publications include The Dawn of European Civilization (1925; 6th ed., 1957), The Danube in Prehistory (1929), The Bronze Age (1930), Man Makes Himself (1936), What Happened in History (1942), and Society and Knowledge (1956).