(born 25 July 1937 in Stockton-on-Tees) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites. He developed the Anatolian hypothesis, which argues that Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages, originated approximately 9,000 years ago in Anatolia and moved with the spread of farming throughout the Mediterranean and into Central and Northern Europe. This hypothesis contradicted Marija Gimbutas's kurgan hypothesis, which states that Proto-Indo-European was spread by a migration of peoples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe approximately 6,000 years ago.
Renfrew was formerly the Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and is now a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
He is a fellow of the British Academy and a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences.