Colin Renfrew

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Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, looking at Roman gold coins from near St Albans by Sam Moorhead

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (born July 25, 1937 in Stockton-on-Tees ) is a British archaeologist known for his work on radiocarbon dating , archaeogenetics and the protection of archaeological sites from looting.

Life

Renfrew graduated from St John's College , Cambridge in 1962 . As early as 1961–1963 he worked as an obsidian expert on the first excavation campaign in Çatalhöyük under James Mellaart . In 1965, he was with a thesis on the Neolithic period to the Cyclades doctorate .

In 1972 Renfrew became a professor at the University of Southampton . In 1973 he published the widely acclaimed work Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe , in which he doubts the assumption that prehistoric cultural innovations arose in the Middle East and then spread across Europe . In 1983 he became Disney Professor of Archeology at Cambridge University . He held the position until his retirement in 2004. In 1990 he became director of the McDonald Institute at the University of Cambridge , an institute for archaeological research.

Renfrew has been married to Jane M. Ewbank since 1965 and has three children.

Research priorities

→ Main articles Anatolia Hypothesis , Cognitive Archeology

Colin Renfrew had a decisive influence on New Archeology - also known as Processual Archeology - which emerged in the 1960s . In addition to his first work on early cultural development (especially in the Aegean Sea), Renfrew has recently dealt with the problem of the relationship and spread of languages. He combined the “ Indo-European original language ” with the Neolithic of Europe. He criticized the Kurgan hypothesis formulated by Marija Gimbutas and instead explained the spread of the Indo-European languages across Europe through his Anatolia hypothesis .

In the 1980s he took up approaches from theoretical archeology from his early years. If he had dealt with linguistic influences at the time, he now began to establish cognitive archeology , the excavation of the consciousness that earlier peoples had and therefore flowed into the various objects that they created or redesigned according to their needs. To do this, he tried to clarify which forms of interactions existed between these societies and their material environment, and possibly also how their cultural and civilizational transformation had an effect on the peoples. In the 2000s he further expanded the theoretical background of his approach. How do people and things interact? Is a symbolic meaning first developed in the abstract in consciousness and then implemented with objects or does it arise through ritualization of the practical handling of things?

In the spectrum of science 1. In 1984 he published the article Die Megalithkulturen . With regard to the megalithic buildings of today's Britain, he points out the lack of differences in rank between the buried inside the large communal graves, which have often been in use for centuries. From this finding, which relates to an average of 17 deceased per generation (8 women, 9 men), he concludes in a summarizing hypothesis that the megalithic cultures - unlike those that expressed their pyramidal power hierarchy through monumental graves for individual rulers - were set up by "egalitarian" groups.

Since the 1990s he wants to further develop the "functional-processual" approach of New Archeology, which was founded in the 1960s, using a method known as "cognitive-processual". For this, the symbolic content of the objects examined should be taken into account, so that not only "functions" such as increasing soil productivity through the technical advances achieved by a prehistoric population group are permitted, but a holistic view of the culture concerned is made possible. Archaeological findings, such as the mentioned lack of a hierarchy of rank among the buried inside the megalithic communal graves, indicated the mentality of the people who created and used such an object: their social interaction, the nature of their beliefs (in a life in the underground 'beyond') ) and the like. According to his own statements, he represents a different approach than the "postprocessual" or "interpretive" theories, insofar as their aim is merely to supplement the vector of functionality in a hermeneutic way. For more details on the equality hypothesis, see Cognitive Archeology .

Around the turn of the millennium, he focused his approach to the symbolic content of the research objects on the question of early religions or rather: the ritual behavior before the beginning of a religion in the sense of what is now called the belief in gods ( deism ). Based on the appropriate interpretation of the relics found, 2001 identified the Chaco Canyon in Southwest America as a place where behaviors with expressions of high veneration would have taken place: rituals of high devotional expression . He defined this location as the goal of communal gatherings, similar to Christian pilgrimages. He differentiated the type of rituals of that time from those of today's religions by inferring from the lack of any iconography (representation of personal, individual deities including their supernatural powers ) that there was no form of worship.

In the course of this work, he brought together aspects of his previous activities. In particular, he also identified the hoards of Kavos on the Greek island of Keros , Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia, the Orkneys, Easter Island , the megalithic temples of Malta and Stonehenge as places of high devotional expression .

As a doctoral student, he carried out the first survey of the Kavos field on the Cycladic island of Keros in 1963 and, together with Christos Doumas, directed the largest excavation to date in Kavos in 1978/88. Receiving the Balzan Prize in 2004 enabled him to organize another major excavation with the aid of the prize money. With the support of the University of Cambridge , the Institute of Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), the British Academy , the British School at Athens and several foundations and associations, he was able to carry out three excavation campaigns in the Kavos field in the west of the island of Keros between 2006 and 2008 and perform on the offshore island of Daskalio . They produced outstanding results, such as by far the largest hoard of the Cycladic culture and the largest settlement of the Keros-Syros culture .

Memberships

Colin Renfrew was a member of the Ancient Monuments Board for England (1974-1984), the Ancient Monuments and Advisory Committee (HMBC) (1983-2002), the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England (1983-1986), the Science and Conversation Panel (HMBC) (1983–1986) and the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments (England) (1976–1985). He was Chairman of the Archaeological Committee (RCHM) (1979–1983), a member of the Science-Based Archaeological Committee (SERC) (1979–1983) and Trustee of the British Museum (1991–2001).

Honors

In 2003 Renfrew was awarded the European Latsis Prize and in 2004 the Balzan Prize . In 2007 he was made an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences . He is a fellow of the British Academy and a full member of the Academia Europaea . In 1991 he was raised to a life peer as Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn , of Hurlet in the District of Renfrew , in 1996 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 2006 to the American Philosophical Society .

Digs

Works

  • The Emergence of Civilization: the Cyclades and the Aegean in the Third Millennium BC . Methuen, London 1972; reissued and prefaced by John Cherry, Bannerstone, Oakville, Conn. 2010 and Oxbow, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-9774094-7-1 .
  • (Ed.) The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory . Conference proceedings for the conference at the University of Sheffield. Duckworth, London 1973.
  • Before Civilization, the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe . Penguin, London 1973.
  • (Ed.) British Prehistory, a New Outline . Noyes Press, Park Ridge, NJ. and Duckworth, London 1974. An Introduction for Students.
  • Problems in European Prehistory . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1979, ISBN 0-85224-355-3 . A collection of 18 articles.
  • (Ed. With Kenneth Cooke) Transformations: Mathematical Approaches to Culture Change . Academic Press, New York 1979, ISBN 0-12-586050-1 .
  • with Judson T. Chesterman a. a .: Investigations in Orkney . Research Reports of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Volume 38, London 1979.
  • (Ed., With J. Malcolm Wagstaff) An Island Polity: the Archeology of Exploitation in Melos . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1982, ISBN 0-521-23785-8 .
  • (Ed., With Stephen Shennan ) Ranking, Resource and Exchange . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1981, ISBN 0-521-24282-7 .
  • (Eds., With Michael J. Rowlands and Barbara Abbott Segraves) Theory and Explanation in Archeology. The Southampton Conference . Academic Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-12-586960-6 .
  • Approaches to Social Archeology . Edinburgh University Press & Harvard University Press 1984, ISBN 0-674-04165-8 .
  • The Archeology of Cult. The Sanctuary at Phylakopi . British School at Athens, London 1985, ISBN 0-500-96021-6
  • (Ed., With Marija Gimbutas and Ernestine S. Elster), Excavations at Sitagroi: A Prehistoric Village in North East Greece . Volume 1. Los Angeles 1985, ISBN 0-917956-51-6 .
  • (Ed., With John F. Cherry) Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-11222-2 .
  • Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of the Indo-European Origins , Cape, London 1987, ISBN 0-224-02495-7 .
  • with Paul Bahn, Archeology: Theories, Methods and Practice . Thames and Hudson, London 1993, ISBN 0-500-27867-9 .
  • (Ed., With Ezra BW Zubrow) The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archeology . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-45620-7 .
  • (Ed., With Chris Scarre ) Cognition and Material Culture: the Archeology of Symbolic Storage Cognition and material culture , collection of papers for a conference at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge in September 1996 The Archeology of External Symbolic Storage: the Dialectic between Artefact and Cognition: the archeology of symbolic storage . McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-9519420-6-9 .
  • (Ed. With David Nettle) Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily . McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 1-902937-00-7 .
  • Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership, the Ethical Crisis in Archeology . Duckworth, London 2000, ISBN 0-7156-3034-2 .
  • (Ed., With Katie Boyle) Archaeogenetics: DNA and the population prehistory of Europe . McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 1-902937-08-2 .
  • (Eds., With April McMahon and Larry Trask) Time Depth in Historical Linguistics . McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 1-902937-06-6 .
  • Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos 1974-77. The British School at Athens, Supplementary Volume 42, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-904887-54-9 .
  • with Paul Bahn: Archeology Essentials. Theories, Methods, and Practice . Thames & Hudson, London 2007, ISBN 0-500-28637-X .
    • German: Basic knowledge of archeology. Theories, methods, practice , translated by Helmut Schareika Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG), Darmstadt 2009, licensed edition by Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-3948-3
  • (Eds. With Christos Doumas , Lila Marangou, Giorgos Gavalas) Keros, Dhaskalio Kavos - the investigations of 1987-88 . McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, 2007, ISBN 978-1-902937-43-4

Quote

  • “The whole carefully constructed building is collapsing and the history of the standard textbooks must be discarded.” (Before Civilization, Chap. 5, The Collapse of the Traditional Framework).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Colin Renfrew: Symbol before concept . In: Ian Hodder (Ed.): Archaeological Theory Today . Polity Press 2001. pp. 122-140.
  2. ^ Colin Renfrew: Towards a theory of material engagement. In: E. Demarrais, C. Gosden, C. Renfrew (Eds.): Rethinking Materiality . Mc Donald Archaeological Institute 2004, pp. 23-32.
  3. ^ Ian Hodder: Entangled - An Archeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things . John Wiley & Sons 2012, ISBN 978-0-470-67211-2 , p. 34 f.
  4. ^ A b c Colin Renfrew: Production and Consumption in a Sacred Economy: The Material Correlates of High Devotional Expression at Chaco Canyon . In: American Antiquity , Vol. 66, No. 1 (January 2001), pp. 14-25
  5. ↑ Colin Renfrew, Micheal Boyd, et al .: The oldest maritime sanctuary? Dating the sanctuary at Keros and the Cycladic Early Bronze Age . In: Antiquity , Vol. 86 (2012), pp. 144–160
  6. ↑ Member History: Lord Colin Renfrew. American Philosophical Society, accessed January 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Renfrew, Colin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Renfrew, Andrew Colin, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British archaeologist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockton-on-teas