Stories by Colin Renfrew

The ancestor of each language was taken to its current territory by pioneers, farmers, traders or a conquering elite. Multidisciplinary studies are clarifying their respective roles

Almost all European languages are members of a single family. The author contends that they spread not by conquest, as has been thought, but along with the peaceful diffusion of agriculture

The change from simple tombs to elaborate henges in the Neolithic period of western Europe appears to have coincided with the rise of centralized political control

Tree-ring measurements have shown that early carbon-14 dates are off by as much as 700 years. As a result the view that cultural advances diffused into Europe from the east is no longer tenable

Objects made of this volcanic glass are found at many Neolithic sites around the Mediterranean. Spectroscopic analysis indicates that the raw material often came from hundreds of miles away