childe

But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the Childe definition of civilization is wrong.

The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model.

I'll have to read up on Childe and Osborne.

> Childe was a prolific letter writer, sending short, clear missives to friends and supporters or even the Lunacy Board about his case and his well-being.

When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage.

So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?

Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the traditional childe definition.

These ambiguities weren't issues back when it was being used as a criterion for "civilization" ala childe, but that time has long since passed.

Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations.

The statement that Byron was "mad, bad and dangerous to know" comes from Lady Caroline Lamb after their first meeting, when the publication of "Childe Harold" (1812) made him the literary and social lion of London at the age of 24.

Childe’s father sent the cyphers to polymath Charles Babbage with the hope he could decipher them.

It was these letters, rather than the medical testimony, that were decisive in Childe’s case.

Not knowing your curriculum, level, or when you were in school, but it probably came up with either Childe's 10 traits or from Trigger's definition.