Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, (born 25 July 1937) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites.

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.

Early life and education

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. He was elected president of Cambridge Union in 1961. In 1965 he completed his PhD thesis ''Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the Cyclades and their external relations''; in the same year he married Jane M. Ewbank.

Academic

In 1965, Renfrew was appointed to the post of lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Between 1968 and 1970, he directed excavations at Sitagroi, Greece. In the 1968 Sheffield Brightside by-election he unsuccessfully contested this 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 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 northern Europe.

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.

From 1987 to 1991 he co-directed excavations at Markiani on Amorgos and at Dhaskalio Kavos, Keros, Greece.

Renfrew's work in using the archaeological record as the basis for understanding the ancient mind was foundational to the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Renfrew and his student, Lambros Malafouris, coined the phrase neuroarchaeology to describe an archaeology of mind.

In 1996, Renfrew formulated a sapient paradox, that can be formulated as ""why there was such a long gap between emergence of genetically and anatomically modern humans and the development of complex behaviors?"

Renfrew served as Master of Jesus College, Cambridge from 1986 until 1997. In 2004 he retired from the Disney Professorship and is now a Senior Fellow at the McDonald Institute. From 2006 to 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

*Fellow of the British Academy (1980)
*Renfrew was created a life peer on 24 June 1991 as Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, of Hurlet