The European Science Foundation awarded this year's European Latsis Prize to Professor Colin Renfrew, Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, for his exceptional contributions to European Prehistory.

The prize ceremony took place in Strasbourg, France, on 27th November. The prize, worth 65,000 Euros, is awarded annually to an individual or group who, in the opinion of their peers, has made the greatest contribution to a particular field of research in Europe. The chosen field of the 2003 prize was ‘archaeology’.

Professor Renfrew is recognised to be a pioneer in his field by using innovative, interdisciplinary techniques to shed light on the human past. Thirty years ago, Renfrew and colleagues were the first to use trace-element analysis and tree-ring calibrated radiocarbon dating to illuminate prehistoric trading patterns and raise new questions on how early European culture spread.

His work has laid bare the independent origin of the megalithic monuments of northwestern Europe, which proved to be earlier than the pyramids of Egypt, and has showed the independent development of copper metallurgy in the Balkans and Spain. The discovered cultural autonomy of these regions has led to their relationships with the rest of Europe to be rewritten and viewed within a unique, historical context.

More recently, Renfrew has combined prehistoric archaeology, historical linguistics and molecular genetics to propose new origins of language.

Professor Renfrew said:

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