David Wengrow, DPhil.
Professor of Comparative Archaeology

Institute of Archaeology
University College London

My Distinguished Lecture offers an analysis of a contemporary myth: our myth of the “origins of inequality.” How did the broad sweep of human history first come to be conceptualised in this way? Why is it so often assumed that a time before social inequality and political awareness existed? Or that civilization, complexity, and scale come naturally at the price of human freedoms? The answers are often surprising, and highlight the role of archaeology and anthropology as touchstones of the modern political imagination.