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.

Through the creativity of early farming households and communities, diverse mosaics of agriculture, such as emerged across the lowlands and uplands of western Asia, Greece and the Balkans, ultimately extended across the continent, from the mediterranean south to the continental interior and Atlantic façade. Rather than a monolithic regime or fixed formula, early farming was an ongoing experiment in which cycles of change can be inferred, punctuated in places by dramatic collective activities ranging from violent conflict to feasting and monumental ritual construction. This lecture will focus on the long-term sustainability and how the success of early farming was a product of its continual reinvention, reflected in the diverse settlement forms, material cultures, cuisines and landscapes of Neolithic 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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