Gordon Childe Lecture: ‘Towards a new European Prehistory - genetics, archaeology and language dispersals’

Professor Kristian Kristiansen (University of Gothenburg), will give our Gordon Childe Lecture entitled ‘Towardsa new European Prehistory - genetics, archaeology and language dispersals’.
Abstract
In this presentation, I outline the effects of the ‘third science revolution’, and the need to re-theorize and re-interpret European prehistory. I propose that we are experiencing a transformation from relative to absolute archaeological knowledge, which in much the same way as the C14 revolution allows us to invest more theoretical labour and methodological rigour in interpretation. We are thus moving increasingly towards ‘archaeology as history’ by combining small scale historical events in real time with long-term transformations, based on the application of big-data. It will allow new interpretations also of how language dispersals took place, as we can now start combining archaeological and linguistic changes due to progress also in historical linguistics. This I shall exemplify in a number of case studies.

There will be a wine reception to follow in the A.V. Leventis Gallery (Ground floor, UCL Institute of Archaeology).