Colin Renfrew was born in 1937 and studied natural sciences and archaeology at Cambridge, graduating with first-class honours. While at Cambridge, he was President of the Union. He travelled in Eastern Europe and in Spain and then undertook field-work in the Cycladic Islands of Greece. In collaboration with Professor J. D. Evans, he led an expedition to excavate the first Stone Age settlement to be discovered on the Cyclades. In 1969 and 1970 he was field director of the Anglo-American excavations at the important prehistoric settlement mound at Sitagroi in North Greece, and from 1974 until 1976 he directed the excavations at the Bronze Age town of Phylakopi on the Cycladic island of Melos.
He was a research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, from 1965 to 1968, and has lectured in European prehistory at the University of Sheffield and at the University of California at Los Angeles and was a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) for ten years until 1987 and is a member if the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee. Professor Renfrew was made a fellow of the British Academy in 1980. He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge and is Disney Professor of Archaoelogy at the university. He is currently Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and since 1991 has sat in the House of Lords as Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn.
As well as contributing scientific papers to Nature, Scientific American and archaeological journals, he has written and edited many publciations on archaeology. His own books include The Emergence of Civlization (1972), Problems on European Prehistory (1979), Approaches to Social Archaeology (1984), The Prehistory of Orkney (1985), The Archaeology of Cult (1985), Archaeology and Language (1987), The Cycladic Spirit ((1991) and, with G. Daniel, The Idea of Prehistory (1988). He also edited The Explanation in Archaeology (1982), The Ancient Mind (1994) and Cognition and Material Culture (1999).