An Interview With Colin Renfrew

Author(s): Richard Bradley

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 71-82
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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Reports

An Interviewwith Colin
Renfrew'

RICHARD BRADLEY
Reading,England.x 9I

RB: I want to startby asking you how you came to ar-

chaeology.

CR: I was a schoolboydiggerand startedoffat the age

ofabout i 3. Therewas a Latinmasterat school who was
able to get me a place on SheppardFrere'sexcavations
at Canterbury.I went regularlyformany years and so
definitelylearnedto digin good,honest,Romano-British
stratifiedcontexts.My place in Cambridgewas to read
NaturalSciences,and it neverreallyoccurredto me very
seriouslyto read archaeologybecause I hadn't realised
thattherewas a careerin it.

RB: Do you come froman academic background?Wasn't

yourfatherinterestedin the past?

CR: Interestedcertainly.He workedin the PlasticsDivi-

sion of ICI, and so he travelled a good deal and was
knowledgeableabout many things,but he wasn't espe-
cially concernedwith archaeology.I rememberwe used
to go offon a Saturdayby bicycle-this was duringthe Colin Renfrew.
waryears-to visit local churches,which we foundvery
absorbing,so I think I had an antiquarian taste from
quite an early stage. He was a man of many interests
and was always encouraging.
CR: Yes, it was duringmy second year in Natural Sci-
ences. I began to see thatalthoughI was findingscience
RB: As a schoolboy,were you aware oftwo cultures,the
fascinating,doing some physics and chemistry,some
divisionbetween arts and sciences, or was that some-
biochemistry,some mathematicsand historyand phi-
thingthatwasn't real to you?
losophyof science, it would be still more interestingto
do archaeology,and do it seriously.I was veryfortunate
CR: Well, it was certainlyreal in any school. It was the
thatGlyn Daniel was the Fellow in Archaeologyin my
practicethat you had to choose one or the otherin the
college, St. John'sCollege. It was veryeasy to call on
sixthform(age i6 to i8). It wasn't altogethereasy to
him,and he explainedhow simple it would be to trans-
decidewhetherto go into the science sixthformor the
ferto archaeology.
artssixthform.When I went into the science sixth the
headmastersaid, "I wonderifyou've made the rightde-
RB: Wereyou in contactwith contemporarieswho were
cision,"and wrote"Qualis artifexperdeo" on my school
alreadydoing archaeology?
report.
CR: Yes, I would go to lectures at the Archaeological
RB: And then in Cambridge, you decided that you
Field Club, so I did know a numberof them,including
shouldchangeagain.
BarryCunliffeand Charles Higham (exact contemporar-
ies) and MartinBiddle,with whom I dug on his impres-
I. ? I993 byThe Wenner-Gren Foundation sive excavation at King HenryVIII's Nonesuch Palace.
forAnthropological
Research.All rightsreservedooiTI-3204/93/340.-0006$I.oT. Paul Mellars, anothercontemporary, I only met later.
7I
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721 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

RB: In the periodyou were doingarchaeology,who were yearthatI beganto see thatit reallywould be interesting
the teacherswho had most influence? to go on and do research.One fieldwhich interestedme
was the animal art of the Scythians.I was going to go
CR: Well, certainlyGlyn Daniel was a most mesmeric with some friendsto Eastern Europe at the end of the
teacher, since he was a brilliant lecturer: the things finalyear (the summer of i962), but the scheme to go
which intriguedhim certainlyintriguedhis listeners. to Russia huntingforanimal art fell to the groundbe-
Grahame Clark, of course, was lecturingactively,and cause the Russians wouldn't admit us with the car-
his verysystematicapproachwas also one that I enor- theyweren'tallowingprivatecars to go roundthe Soviet
mouslyrespected.JohnColes did the greatestpartofthe Union at that time-and so we touredthe Balkans in-
lecturing,and certainlythe greatestpartofthe supervis- stead.
ing, so he was a major supportto all those doing the In I96I I went on RobertRodden's excavationsat Nea
prehistoricoption.Then Eric Higgswas supervising,and Nikomedeia, the Neolithic village in North Greece. It
he was a forceto reckonwith.AlthoughI wasn't reading was a veryrewardingexperiencein many ways; it was
the Palaeolithic, one certainlyhad a few lecturesfrom an excellent excavation.Afterthat I went down to the
Charles McBurney,which were always fun and differ- National Museum in Athens and saw the Cycladic col-
ent. There was quite a rangeof interestingpeople. lections,which were very strikingvisually, and I was
verymuch impressedby how little was known about
RB: Was David Clarke a distinctinfluenceat thattime? them. During that final year I wrote around to some
people and asked if this would be a good subject, and
CR: Yes, he was in the system,as it were, about two many of them said yes, this was a veryimportantarea.
yearsfartheralong the line. At timesBarryCunliffeand Nothing of great significancehad been writtensince
I were supervisedtogetherby David Clarke, who was GordonChilde's chapterin The Dawn ofEuropean Civi-
then a researchstudent,and he was very stimulating, lisation in I925, SO it was clearlysomethingthatneeded
there'sno doubt about that.But althoughhe must have lookingat.
been writingAnalytical Archaeology [Clarke I9681 at
that time, he wasn't talking very much about those RB: Then it was partlyan offshootof your interestin
ideas. However,I remembergoingto the lectureat the the visual arts?
PrehistoricSocietyin whichhe outlinedhis matrixanal-
ysis of Beaker pottery[Clarke i9621. At that time it CR: I think that must be admitted,although I'm not
seemed dauntinglyavant-garde. sure I particularlysaw it in that way at the time. It
was clear that there were these importantprehistoric
RB: At thatstage,wasn't he engagedin a more sophisti- culturesofwhich not much was known.Yet at the same
cated versionof traditionalculturalarchaeology? time theyhad been assigned a major role in the litera-
ture.Childe was one of the firstto talk about Cycladic
CR: That's right,and his broaderwork,which went into influencesin Egyptand the Balkans, and then Beatrice
AnalyticalArchaeology,was probablydone a littlelater. Blance [i96i] had writteninterestingly about theirrole
While he was writingit, I don't thinkhe was teaching in Iberia.Alreadyas an undergraduatein supervisiones-
it-he waited until it was complete beforetakingthe says forGlyn Daniel I'd seen that therewas something
wraps off. here which didn't work and was questioningthis, so it
was clear that there were issues of significance.But I
RB: Was it the particularinfluenceof those people that thinkyou're right-it was the attractionof the sculp-
led you to prehistoricarchaeologyratherthan work in tureswhich probablydid tug me in that direction.
laterperiods?
RB: I believe you had a periodin the United States after
CR: No, I don't thinkit was. My interestwas always in Cambridge?
prehistoricarchaeology.I did go to lecturesin Mesopota-
mian archaeologyand Egyptology,and to lectures in CR: Yes, but not immediatelyafterwards. My wife,Jane,
Chinese archaeology-until the numbers dwindled so and I moved to Sheffield,and about a year later I was
far that if I stayed I'd be the last person, so that my invitedto go and do a semesterat UCLA. It was possible
finallyabsentingmyselfwould bringthe audience and to obtain leave fromSheffield,and it provedveryenjoy-
hence the lecturesto an end! Fromthatquite wide sam- able in a numberofways. I liked Los Angeles,and I liked
pling I saw that the issues which really interestedme the departmentand met a lot of interestingpeople.
were the originsof humankindand of human society,
questions that I felt,and continue to feel, are best an- RB: Had the New Archaeologyreallyaffectedthe British
sweredby prehistoricarchaeology. scene by that time? You mentionedDavid Clarke ear-
lier,but how fardid you discoverthose ideas by being
RB: Did you feel any particularattractionto workingin in America?
the Mediterranean?
CR: Well, there were interestingthingshappeningin
CR: Not initially.I stayedon a fourthyearas an under- Britain,but Analytical Archaeology had not yet been
graduate,and it wasn't until the end ofthe penultimate published,so that David Clarke's work of a novel kind

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 Volume 34, Number i, FebruaryI993 | 73

amountedlargelyto thatBeakerpaperwe were speaking fashionable.I had read it as an undergraduatedoingNat-

of.At thattime Lewis Binfordwas actually at UCLA as ural Sciences and thought it unpersuasive then, al-
a professor,
but he had not publishedverymuch bythen. thoughdifficultto argue out of in a formalsense. Rich-
"Archaeology as Anthropology"had been published ard Braithwaite'sScientificExplanation [I953] was the
[BinfordI962], but New Perspectivesin Archaeology firstwork of general theorywhich impressedme, and
[Binfordand BinfordI968] was not yet in print.It was then Karl Popper's The Logic of ScientificDiscovery
an interestingtime,with a lot of interestingideas going [i959]. I've always foundthose veryclear statementsof
around.But the New Archaeologydidn'treallytake off what scientificmethod is and been ratherpuzzled that
until New Perspectives and Analytical Archaeology the Americanslaterwasted so much time arguingabout
were both publishedin the same year,I968. Hempel, who seemed to me way offbeam. Braithwaite
always emphasised that it is the scientist who con-
RB: Who were the people who most influencedyou structsa theoryor a model and then seeks ways of test-
while you were in the States? ing it against the real world. As he put it, "L'homme
propose,la nature dispose." There is nothing"positiv-
CR: Well, firstof all, Marija Gimbutas kindlyinvited ist" about that in the strict,philosophical sense. The
me, initially,to go to UCLA. Our archaeologydiffersin laterphilosophersof science who were so criticalof the
style,but I like herverymuch and got on verywell with New Archaeologygenerallyfailedto recognisethis.
her and thenverymuch enjoyedmeetinga whole range
of people-Lew Binfordwas one, JimSackett was an-
RB: I wonderhow much contact therewas with social
other,and Clement Meighan. At that time I was inter-
anthropology in Cambridge,at least at the theoretical
ested in a formof matrix analysis myselfand so was
quite influencedby what was going on thereand with level.
Gene Sterud(thena graduatestudent)did producea pa-
per out of it [Renfrewand Sterud I969]. There was also CR: Absolutelynone! I can rememberwith greatclarity
the opportunityfortravellingand meetinga lot of peo- when I starteddoing archaeology,goingto some of the
ple, RobertBraidwood,FrankHole, JamesGriffin, Ralph Part i Archaeologyand Anthropologylectures. In one
Solecki, RobertHeizer, RobertEhrich,and some of the introductory lectureEdmundLeach and Charles McBur-
otherseniorfigures,so it was a veryvaried experience. ney were jointlyspeakingon the relevance of archaeol-
ogyto social anthropologyand vice versa,and even then
RB: Essentially,then,your directexposureto what be- I was annoyed-I'm more annoyed in retrospect-that
came known as analytical archaeology took place theyboth made a greatjoke out of sayingthat the one
throughthe literatureafterwards? disciplinehad no interestorrelevanceto the other.They
foundit all veryamusing,and I thoughtat the time that
CR: Yes, in a sense that's true. The most important thiswas negativeand I still thinkso. At thattime there
workswere those two,I think-David Clarke'sAnalyti- was negligiblecontact, I would say, between the two
cal Archaeologyand the Binfords'New Perspectivesin departmentseven though they were part of the same
Archaeology.At the same time manypeople were inter- facultyin Cambridge.
ested in thinkingabout how archaeologyought to be,
therewas a widespreadnotion that it was rathercon- RB: In a sense, the firstyou had seen of an integration
fusedand chaotic and "historical" in the old-fashioned ofthe disciplineswould have been in the United States.
and pejorativesense. We wanted to systematizeit in a
more coherent,theoreticallyexplicit,and in that sense CR: That's certainlytrue. There archaeologyis part of
"scientific"way. I'd been veryinterestedin the courses the anthropologydepartment,and one did meet many
in the historyand philosophyof science in Cambridge, social anthropologists.Certainly I came back with a
and it was quite obvious that one needed to structure huge mass of reprintsand only then became aware of
archaeologydifferently [RenfrewI962]. I'd alreadypub- the traditionofAmericananthropologicalwritingin ar-
lishedsomethingon the notionofmodels in archaeology chaeology,with people like A. L. Kroeber,JulianStew-
by the time those two works emerged[RenfrewI968]. I ard,and Leslie White.
rememberfeelingthat thingshad to change, that one
had to be more explicitabout explanationand what ex-
planationmightbe. RB: In otherwords,the changethattook place in British
archaeologyhappened in contact with American social
RB: In fact,your perspectiveon archaeologywasn't so anthropology. There was somethingof a divorce from
much a productof the American experienceas of the contemporary English social anthropology.
in
time spent studyingNatural Sciences Cambridge?
CR: Yes, certainlythat was my own personal experi-
CR: That's right.Moreover,it was in no way a product ence; and ifone thinksabout David Clarke's Analytical
of the Hempel approach.I'd had the opportunityto read Archaeology,he uses Californiancases quite oftenand
the Hempel and Oppenheim [I948] paper in which they theworksofotherAmericananthropologists. He makes
say that all explanation, including historical explana- verylittlereferenceto Britishsocial anthropologyor to
tion, is based on laws, a view which later became very the Britishanthropologicaltraditionin Africa.

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74 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

RB: That may be the backgroundto Leach's famousde- [Cann and RenfrewI964], so it did underminethe idea
nunciationof the state of archaeologya few yearslater of verylong-distancelinks in the Neolithic period.But
[Leach I973]. that came as the result of the study; it was not an a
prioribelief.
CR: His denunciationwas rootedin a fairlycomprehen-
sive ignoranceofthe stateofarchaeology,but thatnever RB: I want to go on to the question ofchronology,
which
preventedhim frommakingveryinterestingand provoc- also bears verydirectlyon the questioningof the diffu-
ative statements.And of course he presentedhimselfas sionist framework.When did you become aware of the
a championof structuralismat that time. implicationsof calibratingradiocarbondates?

RB: And one gathershe did it to anthropologists

as well.
CR: I think so, yes, althoughperhapswith greaterre-
straint.
RB: One ofthe areas thatyou wereverymuch concerned
witharoundthis time was the characterizationofobsid-
ian. Was that an outcome of yourexperienceof natural
science and the techniques you had come across there,
or was it somethingthat developed entirelyfromyour
archaeologicalresearch?
CR: I thinkmainly the former.There was an important
obsidian source on the Cycladic island of Melos. When
I began to thinkabout the Cyclades,I saw thatthis pre-
senteda fascinatingproblemand thatit oughtto be pos-
sible to do somethingwith it technically.An old school
friendof mine, Joe Cann (now Professorof Geology in
Leeds) was a fellowofSt. John'sCollege at thattime and
a researchworkerin the DepartmentofMineralogyand
Petrology.It seemed verynaturalto discuss theproblem
with him, and we looked togetherat thingslike refrac-
tive index and specificgravity,which turnedout to be
no use at all, and it was he who suggestedthe optical
emission spectroscopyapproach. Then we did it very
much together.We selected the materialsystematically
and sat theregrindingup the samples with pestles and
mortars.A seniortechnicianin theirdepartmentranthe
samples throughthe spectroscope,and Joeread offthe
data fromtheresultingphotographicplates.Whatwould
emerge then would be a table of figures,and we had
greatfuntogetherworkingout how we mightbest inter-
pretthose figures.
CR: I'd certainlyseen that the supposed contacts that
had been used to build the existingchronologywere re-
ally very shaky. It was my work in the Cyclades that
allowed me to see that, because it was clear that the
supposed links with Spain were just wrong.The sup-
posed links between the Cycladic Islands in the Early
BronzeAge and the Balkans seemed wrongtoo, and the
chronologyof the Balkans relative to the Aegean was
straightforwardly in error.I'd also seen thatthe evidence
ofcontactbetweenthe so-calledWessex cultureand My-
cenae was altogetherveryshaky. So when Glyn Daniel
gave me a pre-printof a paper by Hans Seuss [i967]
which suggestedthat radiocarbondates would have to
be put earlierif theywere going to be true in calendar
years,I could see how thatwould documentwhat I had
alreadysaid forother reasons in my doctoral disserta-
tion. The links with Spain were completelyfallacious,
and the calibratedradiocarbondates not only confirmed
thisbut showed thatdevelopmentsin Spain and, in par-
ticular, in the Balkans were much earlier than the
Cycladic materialwhich had been thoughtto give rise
to them.So radiocarbonmade absolutelyplain what one
could previouslysuggestand suspect.
RB: In a sense, the discoveryoferrorsin the radiocarbon
chronologyformedan independenttestofyourideas-it
wasn't partof the process of generatingthatframework
in the firstplace.
CR: That's certainlytrue.My doctoraldissertationwas
finishedin I965, and it discussed the Westernlinks to
Iberia and the Balkan links and dismissed them thor-
oughly.The Seuss paper came out later.

RB: Then this was verymuch an outgrowthofthe work RB: When did you decide to test that furtherby strati-
foryour thesis ratherthan an attemptto question the graphicexcavations?
diffusionistframeworkon a continentalscale.
CR: The firstdig I directedin Greece was conducted
CR: That's right.I had already begun to question the jointlywith JohnEvans, in I964-6 5 [Evansand Renfrew
diffusionistframework-I had done so as an undergradu- I968]. I'd already been thinkingabout excavations in
ate in various essays-and when I travelledin Eastern NorthGreece arisingout of that visit to the Balkans in
Europe in I962, priorto takingup research,I came to I962. I was verymuch impressedby the tell mound at
see thattherewas somethingverywrongwith the diffu- Karanovo, a wonderfulexcavation by the Bulgarians
sionistview of the originof metallurgy,just something with this great section of I3-I4 m going rightdown
straightforwardly wrong with the chronology.As you throughthe Bronze Age and into the Neolithic, and I'd
say, the obsidian work arose out of the specificwish to alreadyfeltthat the Balkan sequence had been wrongly
characterizethe Aegean material.Then when the result relatedto the Aegean. It seemed verydesirableto finda
came through,it did prove to be anti-diffusionistin the North Greek site where one could reallysee how it all
sense that there was no Aegean obsidian in the West workedout. So I did some fieldsurveyin I965 and vis-
Mediterraneanand no so-called liparitein the Aegean ited sites in North Greece with Balkan-typepottery-

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 Volume 34, Number i, FebruaryI993 | 75

graphiteware ofthe so-calledGumelnitsaculture.It was
clear thatBalkan-typepotterywas occurringwithinthe
Aegeanbasin and thatthe site ofSitagroi,wherewe later
dug,would probablygive us the necessarylinks-which
it diddo,oncewe gotintoit [Renfrew I97I].
RB: While you were doing this were you conscious of
beingan iconoclast,or was this simplyfollowinga series RB: You began by teachingin an ancient-history
of argumentsto theirlogical conclusion?
rapidly.Then, thirdly,of course, he did employ rather
heavyjargon,and JacquettaHawkes [i968] said thatthis
didn't suit her perceptionof the way the English lan-
guage should be used. But people didn't tryas hard to
understandhis work as they should have done; I still
thinkit's a marvellousbook.
depart-
ment.Did that raise any difficulties?

CR: CertainlyI had seen both in Iberia and in the Bal- CR: Well, it was an ancient-history
department,but we
kans that somethingwas seriouslywrong,and so I did had a splendid,robusthead of department,RobertHop-
want to see whetherthe alternativeto the diffusionist per,who was verytough on everybodythat crossedhis
links which I had suggestedactually worked.That cer- path, and he built up the departmentin a remarkable
tainlydid involvebeingcritical,scepticaloftheprevious way. We did have an archaeologydegreealreadyat that
chronology,and taking the view that the Bulgarians time. WarwickBray,the firstarchaeologistin that de-
were probablyrightthat theirculturesequence evolved partment,had set thingsup very well. I moved in to
much more independentlyof the Aegean one. That was assist him,and he subsequentlywent on to specialize in
certainlya question which needed resolvingand which Americanarchaeologyin London. Hopperwas a terrific
the dig was designed to investigate,and fortunatelyit academic politician-he used student numbers to get
did.Also, we were luckyin gettingplentyofradiocarbon more staff,and so the enterprisegot offthe ground.He
samples so that we also got a very good radiocarbon allowed the prehistoricarchaeologyto get on and never
out ofthesite[Renfrew
chronology I97I]. triedto weave the ancient historyand the archaeology
more closely together.
RB: I rememberthat when that workwas goingon you
seemed to be operatingfroma veryisolated positionyet RB: Apparentlythe fact of workingin Greece wasn't
rapidlypeople came roundto it. Was that how it feltat used to integrateyou into a quite different discipline.
the time?
CR: No, it wasn't. The subject of ancient historywas
CR: Very much so. The curious thingwas that I pro- kept separatein Sheffieldfromthe subject ofprehistory
ducedthesepapersand therewas politeinterestin them, and archaeology,as it was called. The fact that Hopper
but when I wrote a book on the subject called Before didn't choose the alternativeof integration,I think,al-
Civilization [RenfrewI973a] many people said, "This lowed prehistoryand archaeologyto grow at Sheffield,
can't possiblybe true" (althoughfew came out and said as indeed it's done ever since.
so in print).Then the point came that suddenlythose
who had previouslysaid they wouldn't believe a word RB: You had a big conferenceat Sheffield,which, I
of it were more or less saying,"Oh, we always thought think,formy generation,was probablythe firstdirect
that."InitiallyI was angrythathardlyanybodyhad actu- contactwe had with a lot of people we'd been reading
ally turnedround at the time and said, "That was very [RenfrewI973b]. I suspect that that was probablythe
interesting, we foundthatworthwhile."The specialists breakthrough, with a largeaudience beingbroughtface-
either were very sceptical or they said, "Well, of to-facewith theoreticaldebate forthe firsttime.
course!" I neverfelttherewas a terriblysatisfactory re-
sponse on that one. CR: It was, I think,and interestinglyit was quite sig-
nificantforthe Americanparticipantsas well. Lew Bin-
RB: Why do you think it was that your ideas got rela- fordhad only been to Britainfleetinglybefore,and he
tivelyrapid acceptance,whereas,I think,therewas al- used to speak of it as "the firstinternationalconference
ways a resistance to Clarke's attemptsto bringmore of the New Archaeology." It also brought Francois
theoryinto Britisharchaeology? Bordesinto the discussion,since one of the specifictop-
ics was the Mousterian debate-largely because of the
CR: Three reasons,I think:Firstofall, he was genuinely interestof Paul Mellars, who was then in Sheffield.It
much bolderwith the theory;he set out to bringin the- was a veryenjoyableconference,and thatwas of course
oryin, I think,a verycourageousand coherentway and where Lew Binfordand Edmund Leach had theirgreat
called it "theory." In Britisharchaeology,people will confrontation-almostcame to blows.
put up with a certainamount of theoryso long as they
don't notice it too much, and theydon't (or didn't)like RB: By the time you were at SheffieldI feel therewere
its being called "theory."Secondly,I thinkhe was tact- certainconnectinglinks betweenyourresearchprojects,
less in his introduction;he spoke in an identifiableway particularlya sustained critiqueof the work of Gordon
about certainBritisharchaeologistsand was ratherrude Childe. Were you conscious of him as a leading figure
about some open-minded,positive people who indeed you needed to come to termswith and,perhaps,to react
did show themselveswillingto change theirideas quite against?

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76 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

CR: In a way,yes. It's a pityreallythatit just so happens
thatI've had to disagreewith what he said on a number
of occasions. In the long vacation beforebeginningthe
archaeologycourses in Cambridge,much of the reading
that I sat down to grapplewith was Gordon Childe's-
Piecing Togetherthe Past [i956], Man Makes Himself
[I936], The Dawn of European Civilisation [I925], and
so on-and they'resplendidlycoherentworks.I already
felt completely sceptical on just about everythinghe
said about Indo-Europeanissues and Aryans and saw
him as takinga rathermigrationistposition,but it was
a surpriseto me when the chronologybusiness worked
out as we've just discussed; clearly that was a major
rupture.But he was also a verypositive influencebe-
cause he was the firstpersonwho reallyhad a coherent
notion of the emergenceof complex society-in some
ways the firstprocessual archaeologist.He set it out in
Man Makes Himself [Childe I936] and WhatHappened
in History[Childe I942], and those books were a consid-
erableinspiration.When I wroteThe Emergenceof Civi-
lisation [RenfrewI972a), Childe's work was to a large
extent an inspiration, and I dedicated the book to
I did regardhim as a positive influenceeven thoughon
diffusionI thinkthatsubsequenthistoryhas shown that
he was sometimeswrong.
what differenceit made if you followed the calibrated
chronology.I suggestedthat Malta would be an excel-
lent place, and it did make a very good film location
because, if you follow the calibrated chronology,the
templeshad to be much earlierthan theirsupposedpro-
totypes farthereast [RenfrewI972b]. Then Collison
asked where we would go in Britainto bringclose to
home the lesson of the calibratedradiocarbonchronol-
ogy. I'd never been to Orkney,so that was one reason
forwantingto go there,but clearlytherewereveryspec-
taculartombs.Therewereno radiocarbondatesforthem
at that time, and theyhad been dated quite late, but if
what I was advocatingwas correcttheywould have to
be very much earlier. We went to Orkney to film at
Maes Howe and were able to argue that case. It was
while therethatI realized thattherewas one tomb that
had neverbeen properlyinvestigated,and it would be a
veryfascinatingone to dig,namely,Quanterness.I went
with Collison to call on the farmerwho owned the site
to ask if it might be possible to dig there,and a year
or so later I did so [RenfrewI979a]. Then numerous
radiocarbondates came fromOrkney,froma numberof
digs,because otherpeople startedworkingthereat the
same time, so a very coherentradiocarbonchronology
did emergeover the next few years [RenfrewI985].

RB: Is yourreadingofChilde also a reasonforyourgrow- RB: We've mentionedsome ofyourexcavationsin Scot-

inginterestin the relationshipbetweenarchaeologyand land and the Aegean. Are thereotherpartsof the world
language?This was certainlyone of the startingpoints whereyou have considereddoing fieldwork?
of his work.
CR: I've always thoughtof the Indus Valley-in terms
CR: Yes, but he was of course dealing with the major of the input of resourcesa verymuch neglectedarea. If
problemsof the earlyyears of the century,problemsof you go to the Aegean, there are literallydozens of re-
cultureand language and race. It's sometimesforgotten search studentsrushingaround lookingfordissertation
that Childe was one personwho dealt impeccablywith topics, while in the Indus Valley there's distinguished
race. At the time he wrote The Aryans[Childe I926] he workby Indian and Pakistani colleagues but not in very
may have expresseda few thingsratherbadly, but he greatnumbers.The numberof studentsfromBritainor
saw that the so-called race issue was a non-issue and the United States out there is really quite small, and
reallyneverwasted verymuch time talkingabout it. Of there are vast amounts of material. Anotherarea that
coursehe came to archaeologybecause ofhis interestin certainlytempts me, though it might have been and
the Indo-Europeanlanguagequestion. I read The Aryans would still be more difficultorganisationally, is thatcu-
quite earlyon and just thoughtit wasn't at all convinc- rious gap between the Neolithic in China and the high
ing and thendroppedthe matter.It was onlylater,when BronzeAge. Until recently,this seemed to lack any cov-
I came to thinkabout certainaspects ofGreekarchaeol- erage,thoughI thinkthat is being filledin now.
ogy,pre-Greekplace-names,and so on, that I began to
have some ideas on the subject. RB: Have you had any sort of long-termplan foryour
own research,or have subjects tended to emerge,with
RB: Were you tryingto assess his fieldworkwhen you work on one paper leading straightinto the next?
mounted your excavations in Orkney,or was Orkney
such a suitable area thatyou bothwent thereto investi- CR: They have tendedto emerge,partlybecause, I think,
gate megalithictombs? much archaeologicalresearchhas to be a littleopportu-
nistic.You see thatthereis materialthatoffersopportu-
CR: Orkneywas an instance of the good influenceof nities,which is reallywhat I did with the Cyclades,and
television,as a matterof fact,because I'd been asked thatthereare problemsthatneed solvingwhich you can
by David Collison of the "Chronicle" series to make a see how to solve, which is what happenedwith charac-
television programmeon radiocarbondating-the im- terizationwork on obsidian. Or you suddenlysee some-
pact ofthe calibration-at a timewhen it was reallystill thingthatis terriblywrongand needs rectifying, like the
news and not verywidelyaccepted.The programmewas chronologybusiness or, indeed, like the Indo-European
ultimatelycalled "The Tree That Put the Clock Back," issue as I see it. At the same time, thereare long-term
and we decided to go somewherewhereyou could show issues that have always interestedme, like the whole

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 Volume 34, Number i, February1993 177

business ofhow it is thathuman societies become more now. Ian Hodder has been a lively source of discussion,
complex over long periods of time. This is really the so it hasn't been necessaryto create a debate in Cam-
directionalprocess in human history.I do findthatper- bridge:it's impossibleto escape fromit,and I know that
haps one of the most fascinatingthingsin the human theoutsideworldsometimessees Cambridgeas a sortof
story,and so much of my work has ultimatelybeen di- nest of vipersdoing nothingbut arguingarchaeological
rectedtowardsunderstandingthe genesisofcomplexso- theory.
ciety.
RB: Hasn't Cambridgealways had a traditionofdissent?
RB: Do you feel that there are initiativesthat you've Did you findit a difficultadjustmentgoingfrombeing
taken in your research that you would like others to an iconoclast to headinga departmentwhich had other
have taken further?Or are there topics that have not iconoclasts?
been followedin the way you mighthave wished?
CR: No, I've neverhad difficultylivingwithiconoclasts.
CR: I'm not particularlyaware of that-I think that if There's no harm in breakingeach other'sicons. I've al-
thereare opportunitiespeople do, sooner or later,pick ways been a sceptic and quite enjoy polemic. I really
them up. There are areas in my own research that I enjoy the atmosphereof debate in Cambridge,and in-
would like to have carriedfurther.I think it's a just deed I think one of the positive thingsin recentyears
reproachof the early New Archaeologythat it rather has been that the debate has continued and, I think,
overlookedthe symbolic; thoughit said it operatedin largely without acrimony. People do speak to each
that area, it never did verymuch, and I've been inter- other,and so the debate is a fairlyopen one. I hope it's
ested to tryand work in that direction.I do feel that a stimulatingplace for students to be, though some-
there is a lot more that could be done just by sitting times a bewilderingone when they get told opposite
down and workingat it, and I'd like to see more people thingsin successive hours of lectures.
do that.
RB: Have you foundyour own thinkinginfluencedby
RB: Southamptonwas reallyyour firstchance to build the debates that are going on here now, or have you
up a universitydepartment.What kind of department decidedwhat yourposition is and elected to workwith
did you have in mind? that?

CR: It should firstof all be recognisedthat BarryCun- CR: I thinkone always getsmore out ofideas when one
liffestartedthe departmentoffand got it goingin a very discusses them with the people who have them rather
effectiveway, so there was already a good tradition thanjust readingthe polemic, so althoughI am critical
there,takinga stronginterestin prehistoryand in later of what I see as some of the pretensionsof so-called
periodsand an interestin Britainalso. I thinkmy con- post-processualarchaeology(and I thinkcallingit "post-
cern has always been to tryand think more carefully processual" is one of the pretensions),at the same time
about what we're doing-to ensurethatthereis a sound I certainlylearnt a lot fromsome of the ideas there.I
theoreticalbackgroundto the work of students-and thinkIan Hodderwas one ofthefirstto stressthenotion
certainlyboth in Sheffieldand in SouthamptonI was of the active role of material culture-that it isn't just
verykeen to develop the methodologicalaspect of the reflectingthe realityofsocietybut verymuch constitut-
teachingalso. That made it naturalto bringin quantita- ingpartof thatreality[HodderI982]. I thinkthatwas a
tivemethods,so thatthe Master's degreein quantitative point verywell stressed.There are otherpoints where
archaeologyseemed like a good idea, and also to be open I've certainlyfelt I've learnt a good deal. Moreover,I
internationally.It's verydifficult,of course-one can't think it's always difficultto say original things and
teach the archaeologyof everycountryunless one has a make real contributions,so one isn't to be surprisedif
verylargedepartment-but one can encouragean inter- one judges three-quarters of somethingto be erroneous
nationalflavour.I thinkthat's the way thingsdeveloped and only one-quartersomething one can agree with.
in Southampton. Talking new sense for as much as one-quarterof the
time is doingverywell indeed.
RB: Were you able to bringthis to Cambridge,where
the universityhas a verydifferentstructure? RB: Does the discussion with the "post-processualists"
lie behind your espousal of cognitivearchaeology?Or
CR: Yes, Cambridge,I think,alreadyhad much of this. was thatalreadyhappeningbeforeyou returnedto Cam-
Indeed,I've always feltthe workof GlynDaniel laid the bridge?
foundationsformuch of theoreticalarchaeologyin this
country.His perceptionofdifferent kindsofarchaeology CR: It alreadyhappened much earlierthan that. When
was verywell expressedin his book The Idea of Prehis- I wrotemybook on the Aegean, The Emergenceof Civi-
tory[i962]. I think much of recent debate is there in lisation [RenfrewI972a], I used a systemsframework
embryo.When I got here,therewas a traditionof theo- and dividedthe book among subsystems.One was "sub-
retical debate-Higgs arguingwith McBurney,arguing sistence" and one was "metallurgy" and one was
withDavid Clarke-but unfortunately all thoseare dead "trade,"and I'd alreadydone bits ofworkin those direc-

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78 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
tions, but then one was "social," and when I thought
about it I felttherewas more to be done in that direc-
tion, and that's how I came to call a book Approaches
to Social Archaeology[RenfrewI984]. Anotherchapter
in The Emergenceof Civilisation was on what I called
"symbolicand projectivesystems,"and a lot ofthe ideas
which I've had since but haven't reallyfullyworkedout
were presentin that chapter,so that when I gave my
inaugural lecture "Towards an Archaeologyof Mind"
[RenfrewI982] I was pickingup some of the ideas there
and tryingto develop more. Whereas I agree with the
"post-processualists"that symbolicaspects oughtto be
studiedbyarchaeologicalmeans,I don'tthinkI've learnt
a vast amountmorefromthemin thatdirectionbecause
it seems to me that they proclaim a new orderand I
reallycan't see theirbasis fordoingso, nor can I see the
structureof their inference (if inferenceit may be
called). Lewis Binfordand, indeed, David Clarke were
rightin stressingthatwe have to constructarchaeologi-
cal theory.That's absolutely correct,and I think the
"post-processualists"are at theirbest when they'recon-
structingarchaeological theoryin a way that Braith-
waite or Popper would approve of, and I think they're
at theirworstwhen they'rejust self-indulgently saying,
"The world is like this," which it may or may not be.
RB: You've also writtena book lately on archaeology
and language[RenfrewI987]. How faris thispartofyour
concernwith diffusionand with what was once the tra-
ditionalframeworkof Europeanprehistory?
CR: Well, it startedoffas verymuch that,a critique,and
in a sense was slightlynegative,just as the chronological
workwas slightlynegative,in both cases springingfrom
a dissatisfactionwith what was widely believed at the
time. With the prevailingview on Indo-Europeanlan-
guages,I thoughtwe were being asked to swallow a lot
of stuffthat wasn't just about language.If you were in-
terestedin Celtic archaeology,I thinkit was impossible
to talk sense, because everyonekept on assuming-it
was an absolute tenet-that of course therewas a com-
ing of the Celts. Why should that be? Because the lin-
guisticargumentssupposedlymade thatperfectlyclear.
Well, theydon't make it perfectlyclear-quite the con-
verse,in my view-so therewas a lot of dead wood to
be cleared away beforeone could reach a view of what
happened. My main purpose in writingthe book was
really no longer to have people telling me, "Hey, you
can't say that,because we know the Celts came." In a
way ChristopherHawkes stimulated me to write the
book when he came to a seminarI gave in Oxfordand
said, "ProfessorRenfrewis completelywrong.Does he
not know that the Greeks were Indo-Europeans?"He
went on about Zeus as an Indo-Europeandeity(I'd been
talkingabout the continuityin religionfromearlypre-
historic times through to later Greek times), and I
wasn't allowed to advocate that continuitybecause the
Greekswere Indo-Europeansand in the classic view the
pre-Greeksweren't.To be freeto studythe development
ofreligionfromprehistoricGreeks onwardswithoutall
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these preconceptionsit really became necessaryto get
ridofthisprevailingdoctrine.It startedoffin thatsense,
as somewhatnegative,and,indeed,I thinkit's genuinely
open to doubtwhetherit does make a greatdeal ofdiffer-
ence to our understandingof the archaeologywhat lan-
guagesthesepeople spoke. I'm not one who believesthat
the language is an artefactwhich conditions how we
thinkso stronglythat the materialworld in which we
live would be vastlydifferent ifwe happenedto speak a
different language. It does seem that most human lan-
guages are veryadequate vehicles forthe expressionof
the thoughtsof the people who speak them. Of course,
there will be a relationship between language and
thought,but I'm not sure we're vastly constrainedin
that way. In the last analysis, it may not mattervery
much whether we're speaking an Indo-Europeanlan-
guageor not,but it certainlymatteredto those interpre-
tationswhich insisted,"Hey, you can't say that,because
you've forgottenthe coming of the Celts." I'd like to
add that since writingthat book I've been fascinated
by developmentsin linguisticsand in geneticswhich I
wasn't aware of when writingit. It does now seem that
thewhole diversityofthe world'slanguagescan perhaps
be explained, partly archaeologically,in a way that
couldn't have been guessed at ten years ago. I've been
writingon that thesis. I did a paper in the Cambridge
ArchaeologicalJournal[RenfrewIggIa], and I've subse-
quently become familiarwith recent developmentsin
geneticswhich I thinkwill have a verybigimpactbefore
long in archaeology.Molecular biologyand population
geneticsare goingto be one area ofthe sciences thatwill
have an enormousimpacton archaeologicalthinking,as
I arguedin my recentHuxley Memorial Lecture [Ren-
frewI992].
RB: Again you may have a sortofretrospectivetest,like
the calibrationof radiocarbon?
CR: I think that may well be so. Of course there are
manydifficultiesin the interpretation because informa-
tion about genes is not at all the same as information
about earlylanguages,but we will come to understand
betterwheretheycorrelateand wheretheydon't.I think
thatis alreadyprovingto be the case.
RB: As well as theoreticalwriting,you've been carrying
out a new fieldproject?
CR: I've been workingin the Cycladic Islands again. It's
been collaborativeworkwith ProfessorMarangouat the
UniversityofIoannina and ProfessorDoumas in Athens.
We wanted to tryto get thingsgoingwith the Cycladic
EarlyBronze Age, which is forall of us a special area,
and so we've workedon two sites.We've workedat Mar-
kiani, a settlementsite on Amorgoswhich is not over-
lain with latermaterials.When it's published,as I hope
it soon will be, it will be the firstdocumented early
Cycladic site that wasn't messed about in laterperiods.
The otherplace we chose was an absolutelyfascinating
site, Dhaskaleio Kavos, on Keros,which has been com-
 Volume 34, Number i, February1993 179

pletelydisturbedby the looters who have been so nu- philosophyofscience oftheirtime. Subsequentphiloso-
merous in recent decades in the Cyclades. It seems to pherscame to feelthatthe philosophyofscience of that
have been by far the richest Cycladic site yet known. time was unduly positivistic. So these incomers said
The fragments leftbehindgivethe richestknowncollec- thatthe archaeologyof its day was verypositivisticand
tion of marblefigures,marblebowls, and so on. We did made a greatsong and dance ofpointingthatout. I don't
a surfacesurvey in the area-Todd Whitelaw here in feel that was of particularservice, though it certainly
Cambridgehad a major role in organisingthe survey laid the basis of some of the "post-processual"ideas.
itself-and thenwe excavatedin the backfillofthe loot- I am critical of "post-processual"archaeologymainly
ers' enterprisesand sieved that. We found no undis- because I thinkit has needlesslycut itselfofffromthe
turbeddepositswhatever,but ifyou act on the assump- positiveaspects of processual archaeology,and it seems
tion that looters are not goingto throwtheirsoil more to me thatgood workcontinuesto be done in processual
thana couple of metresyou're still gettingquite a good archaeology.Certainlyifwe are talkingabout symbolic
spatial control.It was a veryinterestingenterpriseand archaeologyor cognitivearchaeology,it needs the same
an extraordinary site. It mightbe a cemetery,but I think sort of explicit theory-buildingthat the early New Ar-
veryprobablyit isn't. It is an area which probablyin- chaeologistswent in for.I thinkthereis a greatdeal to
volvedritualdiscardand ritualbreakagewhichmaywell be achieved there and whole areas that remain largely
be relatedto funeraryrituals. unexplored.I see what is in effecta second phase of
processualarchaeologywhereit addressesitselfto these
RB: I was wonderingif therewere any initiativesyou'd problems.In the book which I wrote with Paul Bahn
taken in yourwork which you now regardas unprofit- recently,we've laid stress on cognitive-processualar-
able. There are one or two which you haven't followed chaeology,acceptingthat therewas rathera functional
up forsome time, like the catastrophetheory. emphasis in the early days [Renfrewand Bahn I99I].
That, I think,is where archaeologyis going,and it's got
CR: There,I think,you'reright.I can't see how to apply a long way to go.
it further.It seemed to give (and I think did and does
give) the veryimportantinsightthat thingscan change RB: Do you believe thatthereare limits to what we can
suddenly but have gradual causes [Renfrew I979b]. learn?
There are many areas in archaeology where sudden
changeswere thoughtto have sudden causes-which is CR: There have always been lastingdifficulties,
because
one reason migrationswere so oftenadduced-so it's the data are mute. That was a difficultythat faced
very importantto get a feeling for the dynamics of Stukeleyor Aubreytwo or threehundredyearsago, and
changeand to see how thingscan changeveryabruptly. one has to tryand circumventit. A second lastingdiffi-
I don't myselfsee how to use catastrophetheorymuch culty is that the data are incomplete and worse than
beyondthat. The trouble is that it's froma branch of incomplete. Thirdly,you can't get into other people's
mathematics,topology,which, while it shows you the minds, and that's always been a lasting difficulty.We
shape of changes,is not quantitativein the arithmetic are facedwith those perennialproblems,but I thinkthe
pointthatBinford[i968] made when he criticizedChris-
sense. It doesn't actually allow you to write equations
which giveyou the answerin straight,numericalterms. topherHawkes's ladder of inferencewas a very sound
If it did, it would be interestingto work with in thatone: I don't believe thereis anythingin principlemore
way. unknowableabout symbolicsystemsthan about subsis-
tence systems.They may have to be approacheddiffer-
RB: Given the natureofwhat has been called the "radi- ently,but I've always said you can stubyourtoe against
cal critique," are you optimisticor pessimisticforthe a pyramidas easily as against an animal bone, and I
futureof archaeologicalresearch? thinkthat says it all.

CR: I'm veryoptimistic,and, funnilyenough,my opti-
mism is verymuch the same optimismwhich I feltin
the early days of the New Archaeology,as theorywas
broughtto the foreand made explicitand as the frame-
worksofinferenceused in archaeologywerebeingexam-
ined and reassessed and themselves made explicit. I
thoughtthat was a veryexcitingmoment,and I think
its lessons, in the main, were well learnt.A good partof
theradicalcritiquecame fromthosewho perhapsmisin-
terpretedaspects of the New Archaeology.I feel that
much of the debate about positivism,forinstance,is a
misplaced one. A number of philosophers of science
moved into archaeologyand had the greatestpleasure
pointingout thatarchaeologistswho had referred to the
philosophyof science had done so by referenceto the
RB: I'd like to end by turningto some of yourinterests
outside archaeology.Firstof all, the arts-have you al-
ways been interestedin visual arts?
CR: Yes, very much so. At school I began to take an
interestin looking at paintingand sculpture-I wasn't
very good at doing it myself,unfortunately-andI've
always travelledround looking at art galleries and so
on. At school I feltI had to see all the major works of
Michelangelo,and that didn't prove too difficultto do.
Then when I was an undergraduatein Cambridge I
startedwritingartreviews,mainlyfortheundergraduate
newspaper,Varsity,but also elsewhere,and foundthat
reallyinterestingand rewardingbut just a little danger-
ous in thatit's verydifficult,
I think,to be sure of one's

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8o I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

own judgementin looking at the work of a new artist in havinga verypublic political position. You were in-
or a new style.I've certainlyalways been fascinatedby volved in politics as an undergraduate, I gather.
ancientand modernpaintingand sculpture.It is an area
that continuesto fascinateme. CR: Yes, that's right.I took partin studentpolitics and
in debatingat the CambridgeUnion Societyand enjoyed
RB: But apartfromyourwork in the Cyclades [Renfrew it verymuch, both because of the issues it produced-
iggib], you have not taken a particularinterestin arte- the serious issues-but also as an activity.The people
factstudies? one was with, one's contemporaries,were extremely
livelyand interesting, and it just seemed a veryexciting
CR: No. I would be interestedin doingmorein the field thingto do. I foundmakingone ofthoseset speechesin a
ofprehistoricand earlyart styles;I mightbe inclinedto major debate a veryexcitingand interestingexperience.
move in that direction.The truthis, though,I thinkit
is verydifficult
to know what is goingto offerverymuch RB: A number of your contemporariesactually went
more insightso faras aestheticsis concerned.I can cer- into government,didn't they?
tainlysee how one can preparea verythoroughcorpus,
and one can also see thatone likes some thingsand finds CR: That's right.A good numberbecame Members of
them very beautiful and doesn't like other things so Parliament,and some became cabinet ministers.Some,
much, but it's quite difficultto see exactlywhat to do. indeed,have departedfromthe cabinetlong since. There
You like the stuff,and so it's very interesting,but so are about four or five present cabinet ministerswho
what? It's verydifficultto see what to do about it. were in Cambridgeat that time. It was rathera remark-
able conjunctionof people.
RB: Is this one of those areas overlookedby the New
Archaeology?Do we lack rigorousarchaeologicalmeth- RB: What drew you to Conservativepolitics? Had you
ods foranalysingart? always been a Conservative?

CR: Yes, I think that is so. Certainlyone very rarely
reads much in the fieldof aestheticsthatactuallyhelps
one to see very much betterwhat one is looking at.
There are a few art historianswho, I think,have en-
hanced our vision but veryfew who actually help one
to see contemporaryart much better.I do see a very
interestingparallel between the experience of the ar-
chaeologist,workingwithprehistoricdata,and the expe-
rience of the viewer tryingto come to termswith con-
temporaryart,especially abstractart. In both cases you
start offas an observerwith material which in some
sense isn't clearlymeaningfuland withoutthe faintest
idea of how to set about gettingsome sense out of it.
There is genuinelya very interestinganalogy between
the experienceof looking at contemporaryart, which
sometimesis difficultto do constructively, and looking
at archaeologicalmaterials.Again,the whole historyof
archaeologyshows thatit's difficultto do this construc- CR: Tempted,yes, but more temptedby a careeras an
tively,althoughsometimes one can.
RB: And in a way, it's become a reciprocalrelationship, Sheffield.This was, indeed,suggestedto me by a politi-
hasn't it, as artistsbecome aware of archaeologicalphe- cal friend.I did so with interestand seriously,but at the
nomena and are influencedby them?
CR: Yes, that is ratherinteresting,althoughthe artists
I admiremost are not consciouslylookingat the archae-
ological material. It is rather that they are thinking
about theworldin a verysimple,orverydirect,way. I'm
talkingabout modernistsand the landscape: the workof
Richard Long offersan excellent example. As I see it,
theyare facingthe same problemsthatsome of the pre-
historicarchitects,or artistsif you want to call them
that,facedwhen theywere designingmonuments.
CR: I thinkit's mainlybecause I'm a sceptic.This per-
haps relates to what we were saying earlier in the ar-
chaeologicalcase. SometimesI have seen a flawin what
seemed to be a coherentpictureand envisagedan alter-
native: that was the case, say, with radiocarbondating.
In a similarway I became quite rapidlyverycriticalof
the rhetoricof the extremeleftand, indeed, the leftin
general.One ofthe thingsthatseemed to be most satis-
factoryabout the Conservativeswas thattheywere less
rhetoricaland the solutions theyseemed to be offering,
in many cases, seemed more practical,more pragmatic.
I've always thoughtthata revolutionary standpointdoes
carrywithit the dangersofcompletechaos. The collapse
of Marxismis a case in point.
RB: Were you temptedby a political career?
archaeologist,more tempted by an academic career. I
did standforParliamenton one occasion while I was in
same time I was standingforSheffieldBrightside,a very
safeLabourseat,witha majorityof i9,000, and when
we reducedthe majorityby I4,000 I thinkhe was more
surprisedthan I was. Afterthat,one or two opportuni-
ties arose to put one's name in fora saferseat, but it
became clear to me then that if one was going to be a
politician,then one wasn't goingto be an archaeologist
or an academic; it really would not be feasible to do
both,and so I stayedwith archaeology.
RB: What kind of Conservativeare you?

RB: The second area I wanted to mentionwas politics, CR: I'm not quite surewhat the rightterminologyis a
because you'reunusual, amongacademic archaeologists, liberal Conservative,I suppose, somethingof thatkind.

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 Volume 34, Number i, FebruaryI993 |8

I wasn't happywith all aspects of the lateryearsof the RB: So your long-termcommitmentremains academic
Thatcherera, thoughI respectedher economic position liferatherthan politics?
and respectedher forformulatinga policy and thenfol-
lowing it. But therewere a lot of uncomfortablethings CR: Yes, that's right.
about the laterThatcheryears,and I'm veryhappywith
the political changesthathave takenplace recently.I'm
always unhappy that freedomof informationisn't an References Cited
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gistto have thatas an objectivethanforan atomic phys- culturechange:Models in prehistory. Editedby C. Renfrew,
icistto tryto understandfundamentalparticles.I'm sure pp. 76I-7I. London:Duckworth.
Shanks and Tilley would tell me thatthe kind offunda- POPPER, K. I959. The logic ofscientific
discovery.New York:
mentalparticlesI would constructwould be determined Basic Books.
RENFREW, C. i962. CommentsofDr. Daniel's seminaron
by my political beliefs,but I do think that's a load of G. R. Lowther,"Epistemology and archaeologicaltheory."
nonsense. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 3:504.
I968.Modelsin prehistory. Antiquity42:I32-34.
RB: How do you envisageyournew role in the House of I97I. and theprehistory
Sitagroi,radiocarbon, ofsouth-
east Europe.Antiquity45:275-82.
Lords? I972a. The emergence ofcivilisation.London:Methuen.
I972b. Malta and thecalibratedradiocarbon chronology.
Antiquity46:I4I-44.
CR: That I'm not sure of. When I was asked if I would I973a. Beforecivilization.London:Cape.
be interestedin takingpartin the work of the House of Editor.I973b. The explanationofculturechange:Models
Lords,I said I would be very honoured and interested in prehistory. London:Duckworth.
9I79a. Investigations in Orkney.London:SocietyofAnti-
but that my work in College and in the department, quaries.
which is, afterall, work which I am paid to do, would . I979b. "Systems collapse as social transformation,"in
have to take firstplace. Of course, if there'sa bill that Mathematicalapproachesto culturechange.
Transformations:
I'm particularlyinterestedin and actually have some- Editedby C. Renfrewand K. L. Cooke,pp. 48I-506. New
thingto contributeon moresubstantially-a bill in heri- York:AcademicPress.
.i982. Towardsan archaeology ofmind.Cambridge:Cam-
tage or in highereducation,where I mighthave some- Press.
bridgeUniversity
thingto say-I would have to spend more time in the .I984. Approachesto social archaeology.Edinburgh:
Edin-
House of Lords. burghUniversityPress.

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82 | CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

. Editor.I985. Theprehistory of Orkney.Edinburgh:Edin- documentedstratifiedsites here that have yielded rich

burghUniversity Press. collections of stone, bone, and antler artefacts.In this
. I987. Archaeology and language:Thepuzzle ofIndo-
Europeanorigins.London:Cape.
paper I shall deal with the general featuresof Upper
. iggia. BeforeBabel: Speculations on the origin of linguis- Palaeolithic evolution in NorthernAsia. For more de-
tic diversity.CambridgeArchaeologicalJournalI:3-23. tailedinformation I referreadersto therecentreviewsof
. i99ib. The Cycladicspirit.London:Thamesand Larichev,Khol'ushkin,and Laricheva(i987, i988, I990).
Hudson. As earlyas the i88os, when I. T. Savenkovdiscovered
. i992. Archaeology,
genetics,and linguisticdiversity.
Man
AfontovaGora in Krasnoiarsk,he was astonishedby the
27 :445-78.
RENFREW, C., AND P. BAHN. I99I. Archaeology:Theories, coexistence in the assemblages of heavy "Acheulian-
methods,and practice.London:Thamesand Hudson. like" and Mousterian-typetools with miniatureblade-
RENFREW, C., AND G. STERUD. I969. Close proximityanaly- lets, end scrapers,and even various antlerand bone ob-
sis: A rapidmethodforthe ordering ofarchaeologicalmateri- jects that are typologicallywithin the range of the
als. AmericanAntiquity34:265-77.
SEUSS, H. E. I967. "Bristleconepine calibrationoftheradiocar- EuropeanUpper Palaeolithic. As a resultofmore than a
bon timescale from4I00 BC to I500 BC," in Radioactivedata centuryofintensivefieldworkby Russian prehistorians,
and methodsoflow level counting,pp. I43-54. Vienna:Inter- it has become clear that this phenomenonis not acci-
nationalAtomicEnergyAgency. dentalbut recurrentin hundredsof clearlystratifiedas-
semblages. At the same time, an enormous varietyof
preceramicindustrieshas been identified.
The Upper Palaeolithic of CurrentPalaeolithic studies are characterisedby in-
creasinginterestin the distinctivefeaturesof cultural
NorthernAsia' developmentin different parts of the world. Typology
and assemblagecomparisonare crucialforstudiesofthis
kind.Althoughthe characteristicsof Siberianlithicsare
SERGEI A. VASIL 'EV well-known,the problem of "translating"these traits
Instituteof the HistoryofMaterial Culture, into typologicaltermsis farfrombeing solved. A num-
Dvortsovaia emb. i8, St. PetersburgI91065, Russia. ber of scholars have followed Z. A. Abramova in her
I4 VII 92 attempt to impose a modified European typological
framework on the Siberiandata. This approachis appeal-
The vastnessofthe territory ofthe formerSoviet Union ing because of its accessibility,but it tends to overlook
has given Palaeolithic archaeologiststherethe opportu- theparticularcharacterofthe lithicsexamined.Archae-
nity to study Late Pleistocene cultural manifestations ologistsfromIrkutskUniversity,in contrast,have tried
fromvariouscultureareas withintheboundariesoftheir to develop their own typologicalglossaries,totallyig-
own country.The sites of the Russian Plain presentthe noringthe rich European experience.Practicallyspeak-
brilliantpatternof a European-likeUpper Palaeolithic, ing,however,these effortstend to be restrictedto mud-
while the data fromthe Caucasus and CentralAsia show dled terminologicalinnovations that are not always
Near Easternaffinities. The Siberianand FarEasternevi- sharedby scholarsfromothercountries,with the result
dence allows us to trace close links with the Japanese, that the general picture only becomes more compli-
Chinese,and New Worldsequences. Intensivefieldwork cated.
carriedout by a rapidlyincreasingnumberof regional
research centres has revealed several hundred well- HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The characteristicsof the Palaeolithic of Siberia have

I. I993 by The Wenner-Gren FoundationforAnthropological Re- been addressed by Savenkov and later by B. E. Petri,
search. All rightsreservedOOII-3204/93/34oI-0004$I.oo. For
friendlydiscussionsand easyaccess to all kindsofdata,including G. K. Merhart,and G. P. Sosnovskii.FollowingSosnov-
collectionsnot yetpublished,I am deeplygrateful to Z. A. Abra- skii, the formeracademician A. P. Okladnikov devoted
mova,S. N. Astakhov,N. F. Lisitsyn, andG. V. Sinitsyna(Institute many pages to the specific characterof the Northern
of the Historyof MaterialCulture,St. Petersburg), A. P. Derevi- Asian StoneAge sequence. In the I950S he proposedtwo
anko,R. S. Vasil'evskii,V. T. Petrin,S. V. Markin,N. D. Ovodov, stages (or "cycles") in the developmentof the Siberian
Y. V. Grichan,Y. P. Kholiushkin,and P. V. Volkov(Instituteof
Archaeology, SiberianDivision of the Academyof Sciences,No- UpperPalaeolithic-the Mal'tinian and the Afontovian.
A. L. Kungurov(AltaiStateUniversity,
vosibirsk), Bamaul),N. I. Whereasin the formerstage culturaldevelopmentgen-
Drozdovand E. V. Akimova(Laboratory of the Archaeology and erally correspondedto European norms, in the latter
Palaeogeography of CentralSiberia,Krasnoiarsk), N. P. Makarov stage there was a returnto an archaic-likepatternin
andA. S. Vdovin(Krasnoiarsk RegionalMuseum),G. I. Medvedev, stonetool manufacture.This Siberian-type Final Palaeo-
M. P. Aksenov,N. A. Savel'ev,S. N. Perzhakov,0. V. Zadonin,
A. V. Generalov,and T. A. Abdulov(Laboratory ofHumanPalaeo- lithic,he argued,persisteduntil the 8th to 6th millen-
ecology,IrkutskStateUniversity), I. I. Kirillov,M. V. Konstanti- nium B.C., when it was replaced by the EarlyNeolithic
nov,A. V. Konstantinov, V. K. Kolosov,and S. G. Vasil'ev (Chita ("Khin"') (OkladnikovI950). Withthe discoveriesin
PedagogicalCollege),and many others.My thanksgo to S. M. Mongolia and the Altai and Trans-Baikalareas he identi-
Tseitlin,A. F. Yamskikh,G. Y. Zubareva,N. M. Ermolova,A. K.
Kasparov,Y. S. Svezhentsev,and manyotherscientistsforvery fied a thirdstage, the Levallois, chronologicallycorre-
valuablediscussionsconcerning thegeologicaland ecologicalset- spondingto the Late Mousterian-EarlyUpper Palaeo-
tingofthesites. lithic of the European sequence. The main typological

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