Monday, November 25, 2024

The Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn 1937-2024

 Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, who died 24 November, 2024, aged 87, was an 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.

Andrew Colin Renfrew was born 25 July, 1937, and was the Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and was a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

He retired from the Disney Chair of Archaeology at Cambridge University in 2004. After joining the Department of Archaeology at Sheffield University as a lecturer in 1965, he became successively Professor of Archaeology at Southampton and then, in 1981, Cambridge, where he was also Master of Jesus College from 1986 to 1997. He was appointed a member of the House of Lords (Upper House) in the British Parliament in 1991, to serve as a ‘working peer’ on the Conservative side, taking the title Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. Although in the earlier part of his career Renfrew was regarded as one of the leaders of the ‘New Archaeology’, his broad interests and wide intellectual frame- work have meant that he has encompassed a huge range of trends in archaeology. His published output is large and varied, and throughout his career he has been an active fieldworker, with excavation projects in Greece and Britain. His books have been translated into many languages, which, along with his persuasive powers of oratory, mean that he has been extremely influential in the development of archaeological theory over the last 40 years or more, on both sides of the Atlantic, and not only in the English-speaking world. Although he is an international scholar, his contributions to the subject on a European level make him a subject of great interest for readers of the EJA. 

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