Colin Renfrew (1937-2024)
by Dr. Richard Hodges, archaeologist and president-emeritus, ·¬ÇÑÊÓƵ.
Colin Renfrew, who has died aged 87, was a great friend to the American University of Rome, having given masterclasses in the university in 2014 as well as being conferred with an honorary doctorate in 2019. He loved Rome and Italy. As we climbed up the scaffolding to admire the Sistine Chapel when it was closed for restoration in 1992, he recounted how he had come to Italy in the early 1950s as a schoolboy in his father’s red sports car, and then returned to Perugia to study Italian. Its arts, from the Etruscans to the Renaissance, entranced him.Ìý
[pictured: Richard Hodges (left) and Colin Renfrew on the occasion of the awarding of an honorary degree to Renfrew, 2019]
Colin Renfrew was an extraordinary intellect as his many books show, ranging fromÌýThe Emergence of CivilizationÌý(1972) to his series of recent reports about his excavations on Keros in the Cyclades. He was best-known for his research on recalibrating radio-carbon dating (Before CivilizationÌý(1973), his grasp of the origin of languages (Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle of the Indo-European OriginsÌý(1987)) and his fascination in later life for cognitive thinking and genetics. Lest we forget, he also wrote (with Paul Bahn) the world’s most successful textbook about our field,ÌýArchaeology: Theories, Method and PracticeÌýwhich has been reprinted and updated and translated into many languages. This book stemmed from his profound love of being in the field. As a schoolboy, he would often say, he began digging with Sheppard Frere in Canterbury and St. Albans. From then on, digging was a passion: visiting him on Keros in 2018, it was more than evident to his huge team and me that even in his eighties he was still driven by the thrill of discovery. He excavated (and published his findings) on the islet of neolithic Saliagos (Greece), the tell-site of Sitagroi (Bulgaria), his Orcadian excavations at Maes Howe chambered tomb, and his ground-breaking multi-disciplinary projects on the Cycladic islands of Melos and later, Keros. The theatre of field archaeology was for Colin a romance that never lost its appeal.Ìý
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This list of achievements tells only half the story of this exceptional scholar. He was a gifted orator, both witty and marvelously elegant in the way he presented his ideas. An audience had to be challenged and he took palpable delight in the debates that ensued. These excursions into his thinking were invariably thrilling journeys that established him as a beacon in our field. They also made him a great teacher as he experimented in class with his wide reading and encouraged his students to push back at him. His towering presence graced numerous lectures around the world and for decades was an essential element of the Theoretical Archaeology Group which he founded in the late seventies.Ìý
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His generosity was legendary. This awe-inspiring and often visionary academic looked to his pupils and colleagues to add yet more colour to his life. He was always hugely supportive, a thoughtful listener, and gave freely of his time. Friendship mattered to him, almost as much as family. Hence, the immense respect in which he was held across the world. On all continents, his was a name to be conjured with.
[pictured: Colin Renfrew (left) with Michael Boyd on Keros, 2018​]
Personally, I can picture the undergraduate class on Polanyi’s economic theories in 1973 that set me on my career. He greatly supported me to obtain a lectureship, to move to Rome and later Philadelphia then back to the American University of Rome. He visited me in both places, giving lectures that attracted legions of admirers. More, he arranged for me to publish my first analytical book,ÌýDark Age Economics, and relished the controversy it caused. Of the many memories, I think of him as the ringmaster of twenty or so of us, young British academics, in a session on ‘ranking, resource and exchange’ at the Society of American Archeology meeting in Philadelphia in 1980, sparring with his many American colleagues in an audience numbering almost two thousand, and then orchestrating an unforgettable party at which, ever the impresario, he danced as he did on his Greek excavations. How can one ever forget his confident, beaming smile, a sense of joy in life in all its forms?
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Colin Renfrew was an intellectual meteor who illuminated our lives. He enriched us all, making what we do seem so important and worthwhile. Add to that his legacy of books and his exemplary publication of his many excavations, and it is all too clear that we are unlikely to see his like again. It was the very greatest privilege to have known and studied with him.Ìý
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Richard Hodges, November 2024.