Peter Rowley-Conwy


Peter Rowley-Conwy, is a British archaeologist. He is Professor of Archaeology at Durham University.

Early life and education

Rowley-Conwy was born in Copenhagen in 1951. He is the son of Geoffrey Alexander Rowley-Conwy, 9th Baron Langford and Grete von Freiesleben. He attended Marlborough College, and studied archaeology at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating in 1973. He also studied for a doctorate at Cambridge, under Grahame Clark, which he received in 1980. His thesis was on the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Denmark.

Academic career

After completing his PhD, from 1982 to 1985 Rowley-Conwy worked on the Tell Abu Hureyra project, directed by Anthony Legge, and later held the position of research fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He spent the year 1988–89 as an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 1990, Rowley-Conwy was appointed to a lectureship in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, where he was promoted to Reader in 1996 and professor in 2007.
Rowley-Conwy’s research has focussed on hunter-gatherers and early farmers, in particular the nature of the transition between these cultural episodes. He also has an interest in the history of archaeological approaches to that period. A specialist on faunal remains and their contribution to archaeology, he has published widely on European material, including in Scandinavia and Britain, and analysed the major faunal assemblage from Arene Candide in Italy. Since 2000 he has run the Durham Pig Project, which has examined pig domestication around the world by a variety of means. Beyond Europe, his work on the animal bones from Tell Abu Hureyra has been published. Rowley-Conwy has collaborated in a book on the anthropology and archaeology of hunter-gatherers. His work on the remains of agricultural crop plants from Qasr Ibrim is in course of publication.
Rowley-Conwy has also written about the history of Christian Jürgensen Thomsen's three age system, and its impact on archaeology in Denmark, Britain and Ireland.

Honours

Rowley-Conwy was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 2 July 2009.