What Happened in History

V. Gordon Childe, the author of the delightful book "What Happened in History," died 50 years ago. I don't know if contemporary archaeological students read his work anymore. I hope they do, because if they are missing Childe, they are missing a lot. This book is a fascinating interpretation of the rise of human civilization, with the book ending around the fall of the Roman empire. Childe originally published it in 1942 (though he continued to revise and insert editorial notes into the text until the time of his death in 1957), making occasional asides about Nazism and other aspects of his times. Readers who have taken archaeological or anthropological theory courses might groan in looking at the book's contents and see that Childe uses terms such as "savagery" and "barbarism." Such readers should be aware that while the working is antiquated, the substance of Childe's analysis is actually fairly compelling. He focuses a lot on the social relations of property, and also handles well the relationship between ideology and social-material aspects of culture. I once heard that Childe was influenced by, or a follower of, Marxism. While this may or may not be true, the book is not hampered by any stale ideology. Rather, Childe is an excellent writer, including a good story teller, making for compelling reading.