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Colin Renfrew

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The Right Honorable
The Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn
FBA FSA HonFSAScot
Master of Jesus College, Cambridge
In office
1986–1996
Preceded bySir Alan Cottrell
Succeeded byDavid Crighton
Disney Professor of Archaeology
University of Cambridge
In office
1981–2004
Preceded byGlyn Daniel
Succeeded byGraeme Barker
Personal details
Born
Andrew Colin Renfrew

(1937-07-25) 25 July 1937 (age 87)
Stockton-on-Tees, England
Political partyConservative
EducationSt Albans School, Hertfordshire
Alma materSt John's College, Cambridge
Military service
Allegiance United Kingdom
Branch/service Royal Air Force
Years of service1956 to 1958

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, FBA, FSA, Hon FSA Scot (born 25 July 1937 in Stockton-on-Tees) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites. He developed the Anatolian hypothesis, which argues that Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages, originated approximately 9,000 years ago in Anatolia and moved with the spread of farming throughout the Mediterranean and into Central and Northern Europe. This hypothesis contradicted Marija Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis, which states that Proto-Indo-European was spread by a migration of peoples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe approximately 6,000 years ago.

Renfrew was formerly the Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and is now a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

He is a fellow of the British Academy and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Renfrew was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire (where one of the houses is named after him) and from 1956 to 1958 did National Service in the Royal Air Force. He then went up to St John's College, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences then Archaeology and Anthropology, graduating in 1962. In 1965 he completed his PhD thesis "Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the Cyclades and their external relations" and in the same year married Jane M. Ewbank.

In 1965 he was appointed to the post of lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Between 1968 and 1970, Renfrew directed excavations at Sitagroi, Greece. In 1968 he unsuccessfully contested the Sheffield Brightside parliamentary constituency on behalf of the Conservative Party. In that year he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, in 1970 was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and in 2000 elected an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

In 1972 Renfrew became Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton succeeding Barry Cunliffe. During his time at Southampton he directed excavations at Quanterness in Orkney and Phylakopi on the island of Milos, Greece. In 1973 Renfrew published Before Civilisation: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe in which he challenged the assumption that prehistoric cultural innovation originated in the Near East and then spread to Europe. He also excavated with Marija Gimbutas at Sitagroi in Greece.

In 1980 Renfrew was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1981 he was elected to the Disney Professorship of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, a post he held until his retirement. In 1990 Renfrew was appointed as the founding Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. In 1987, he published Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of the Indo-European Origins, a book on the Proto-Indo-Europeans. His "Anatolian hypothesis" posited that this group lived 2,000 years before the Kurgans, in Anatolia, later diffusing to Greece, then Italy, Sicily, Corsica, the Mediterranean coast of France, Spain, and Portugal. Another branch migrated along the fertile river valleys of the Danube and Rhine into Central and North Europe. From 1987 to 1991 he co-directed excavations at Markiani on Amorgos and at Dhaskalio Kavos, Keros, Greece.

Renfrew served as Master of Jesus College from 1986 until 1997. In 2004 he retired from the Disney Professorship and is now a Senior Fellow at the McDonald Institute. From 2006–2008 he directed new excavations on the Cycladic Island of Keros and is currently co-director of the Keros Island Survey.

Positions, awards and accolades

Books

  • Renfrew, A.C., 1972, The Emergence of Civilisation: The Cyclades and the Aegean in The Third Millennium BC, London.
  • Renfrew, A.C., 1973, Before Civilisation, the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe, London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6593-5
  • Renfrew, A.C. and Kenneth L. Cooke, eds. 1979 Transformations: Mathematical Approaches to Culture Change. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-586050-5
  • Renfrew, A.C. and Malcolm Wagstaff, eds., 1982, An Island Polity, the Archaeology of Exploitation in Melos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Renfrew, Colin, 1984, Approaches to Social Archeology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-85224-481-9
  • Renfrew, A.C., ed. 1985, The Archaeology of Cult, the Sanctuary at Phylakopi, London: British School at Athens and Thames & Hudson.
  • Colin Renfrew, Marija Gimbutas and Ernestine S. Elster, eds. 1986. Excavations at Sitagroi, a prehistoric village in northeast Greece. Vol. 1. Los Angeles : Institute of Archaeology, University of California.
  • Renfrew, A.C., 1987, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6612-5
  • Renfrew, A.C. and Ezra B. W. Zubrow, eds. 1994, The ancient mind: elements of cognitive archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-45620-3
  • Renfrew, A.C. and Paul Bahn, 1991, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28147-5. (Sixth edition 2012)
  • Renfrew, A.C., 2000, Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology, London: Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-3034-2
  • Renfrew, A.C., 2003, Figuring It Out: The Parallel Visions of Artists and Archaeologists, London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05114-3
  • Ernestine S. Elster and Colin Renfrew, eds., 2003. Prehistoric Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, 1968–1970. Vol. 2: The Final Report. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Monumenta archaeologica 20.
  • Renfrew, A.C., and Paul Bahn, eds. Archaeology: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2005.
  • Renfrew, A.C., 2008, Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind, Modern Library. ISBN 0-679-64097-5
  • Matsumura S, Forster P and Renfrew C, eds., 2008, Simulations, Genetics and Human Prehistory, Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archeological Research. ISBN 978-1-902937-45-8

Articles

  • “Models of change in language and archaeology”, Transactions of the Philological Society 87 (1989): 103–55.
  • “Archaeology, genetics and linguistic diversity”, Man 27 (1992): 445–78.
  • “Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in Proto-Indo-European: ‘Old Europe’ as a PIE linguistic area”, Journal of Indo-European Studies 27 (1999): 257–93.
  • “‘Indo-European’ designates languages: not pots and not institutions”, Antiquity 79 (2005): 692–5.
  • “Archaeogenetics”, in Archaeology: The Key Concepts, eds. Colin Renfrew & Paul Bahn. London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 16–20.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "No. 52584". The London Gazette. 27 June 1991. p. 9849.
  2. ^ British Archaeologist To Speak At CU March 20 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine University of Colorado, Boulder. 11 March 1999. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
Academic offices
Preceded by Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University
1981–2004 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Master of Jesus College, Cambridge
1986–1996 		Succeeded by
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