Rostovtzeff Lecture Series: The Emergence, Adventures and Legacies of Early Farming in Western Eurasia

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

The Rostovtzeff Lectures are supported in part by a generous endowment fund given by Roger and Whitney Bagnall.

This lecture series considers current archaeological evidence for the emergence of mixed farming in western Asia, its dispersal and establishment across Europe and the long-term creativity and resilience of early farming households and communities. Complementing recent research into the ancient genomics of early farmers, this series explores the ‘how’ of early farming as practice. Farming has changed radically over thousands of years since its emergence, yet there are striking reflections of contemporary values surrounding high agrobiodiversity, regenerative farming, sharing of ecological knowledge and equality in the ‘distant mirror’ of the Neolithic. Investigation of farming as a long-term process that continues today frames new questions about its initial establishment and evolution.

In the global perspective of research into domestication and farming origins, western Asia stands out for its early timeframe and integrated management of crops and livestock. This lecture charts the game-changing coalescence of cultivation and herding in distinct regional configurations of ‘mixed’ farming across western Asia. The dual nature of early farming in western Asia gave rise to ecological, ritual and social practices centred in the co-residential household: the defining social institution of the Neolithic. The co-evolution of mixed farming and modular households precipitated dispersals of farming communities within and beyond western Asia, including to Europe.

Amy Bogaard is Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. A fellow of the British Academy since 2021, Bogaard publishes widely on the nature of Neolithic-Bronze Age farming in western Eurasia, including Neolithic farming in central Europe (2004), Plant use and crop husbandry in an early Neolithic village (2011), Subsistence and society in prehistory (with Alan Outram, 2019) and From first farmers to first cities in western Asia and Europe: The long revolution (in press, 2026). Bogaard’s interdisciplinary research into prehistoric farming has received support from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and the European Research Council. She is recipient of research awards from the Shanghai Archaeology Forum in 2015 and 2025, and of the Christiane and Jean Guilaine prize from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2025.

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