Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the myriad dimensions of a conversation with Marx’s ghost. It is seen most easily in the exchanges that have occurred around questions concerned with the rise of civilization, or the origins of states. The book explores Marx’s legacy to archaeologists and social scientists: his dialectical method, his theory of history and society, and his understanding of ecology. It examines how in the late 1920s Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe brought together elements of distinct discourses. The book opens with a discussion of the interconnections of the evolutionary sociology forged by Herbert Spencer and the functionalist sociology of Emile Durkheim and then considers their linkages with the evolutionary socialism of Karl Kautsky. It analyzes the responses of archaeologists during the 1950s and 1960s to Childe’s views concerning the “urban revolution” – i.e. the rise of civilization, the formation of states.