‘Professor Lord Colin Renfrew and the ‘New Archaeology’: Personal histories in archaeological theory and method’, 23rd October 2006

Acclaimed archaeologist, Colin Renfrew, remembers the exciting and momentous academic changes which dominated archaeology in Britain and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Describing his experiences as a student and young academic at the University of Cambridge, Renfrew argues that basic philosophical questions (What is the nature of explanation? What are we doing as archaeologists?) underlay the emergence of a ‘New Archaeology’ in the 1960s and that young ‘New Archaeologists’ successfully used scientific and computer research methods to answer innovative environmental and economic questions about prehistory. He feels that this new academic development went seriously wrong in the United States when archaeologists relied too heavily on Carl Hempel’s analysis of scientific explanation. Consequently, Renfrew suggests, the New Archaeology was already in decline by the early 1970s.