Eszter Banffy

Biography

Name: Bánffy, Eszter, 27 March 1957, Hungarian
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5156-826X
https://dainst.academia.edu/EszterBanffy https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eszter_Banffy
Born, studied and worked for decades in Hungary, I learnt how to use every small opportunity for scientific contacts before 1989 and also how to intensify these between the former socialist and western countries after the transition. I am a leading specialist of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Europe, with a proven track-record of high-quality publications, completed successful projects and a large active team of earlier and current students. My work has ranged from fieldwork to broad analytical projects, including ritual contexts, landscape and bioarchaeology. During the past years, I have been working much with geneticists for prehistoric DNA studies. Apart from a broad cooperation with hard scientists, being a trained diachronic comparative linguist, I have often linked archaeological data with those from other fields of the humanities, combining all information for a better understanding of prehistoric societies.

In the past decade, I have been the PI of four large projects, including the major excavation and evaluation project of the Alsónyék site in Hungary, the largest Neolithic settlement and cemetery in Central Europe (Bánffy et al. 2014, Bánffy et al. 2016, Bánffy 2020): this work was named one of the world’s ten best field discoveries at the 2017 Shanghai Archaeology Forum. I led the Hungarian part within the Times of their Lives ERC AdG (PI: A. Whittle), and since 2013, as director of the RGK of the German Archaeological Institute, I have been the head of several new prehistoric projects on a European scale from Scotland to Moldavia. All projects I am heading or I am involved is based on my long-term research and scientific network built up between Eastern and Western European archaeology.

The output of my work is reflected by nine authored and co-authored monographs, several edited volumes, nearly 200 peer-reviewed chapters and papers (including a Science, PLOS One and six Nature papers) on the one hand, and by establishing joint work groups, project teams and broad contacts among earlier isolated regions in Europe on the other. My work is especially influential in shaping the debate of the birth and early phases of Neolithic lifeways, but I have contributed much to the subsequent development, especially across Eastern and Central Europe. Thus, my career has been characterised by breaking out of isolation and then by using the freshly gained possibilities for the benefit of larger research groups, for creating better conditions for a joint European archaeology. This is reflected in all my activities: as director in Frankfurt; by keeping my post at the (one-time) Institute at the Hungarian Academy and heading a group of 11 young researchers (my PhD students and Post-Docs) of the Neolithic and of bioarchaeology there, but also by my long-standing work in the Board of the European Association of Archaeologists, where I am President since 2021. As an elected Fellow of the British Academy, I have the task of reviewing visiting fellowships and I have worked in the ERC AdG panel (2015-2018). I am elected member of the Society of Antiquaries, appointed member of the Institute of historic Coastal Research in Wilhelmshaven, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and also in the newly established Max Planck-Harvard Research Institute for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (MHAAM). Since 2021, I am President of the European Association of Archaeologists.
EDUCATION: ELTE Budapest, Faculty of Humanities, Hungary
1983-1988: PhD assistant, Inst. Arch. Hung. Academy of Sc. Budapest
1977-1982 Indology, comparative Indo-European linguistics (M.A. 1982)
1975-1980 Prehistoric and medieval archaeology (M.A. 1980)
1975-1977 English philology (B.A. 1977)
LANGUAGES: Hungarian – mother tongue, English - fluent, German - fluent, Italian - fair, Russian - fair, French – reading. Ancient languages: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Old Persian, Avestan
CURRENT POSITION(S)
hon. professor, Szeged University, school of Geoarchaeology, (2009-) and Eötvös Loránd University, school of history and archaeology (2021), scientific advisor at the Inst. of Arch. Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities
Budapest (2005- )

PREVIOUS POSITIONS
2013-2023 director, Romano-Germanic Commission, German Archaeological Institute, Frankfurt am Main (2013-)
2008-2011: deputy (scientific) director of the Inst. Arch. RCH Hung. Academy of Sc. Budapest
2001-2008: head of the scientific department at the Inst. Arch. RCH Hung. Academy of Sc. Budapest
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
Elected Fellow, British Academy (2017-)
Elected Fellow, Society of Antiquaries (2015-)
DAI ordinary member (2013-)
Scientific Board, Field Service for Cultural Heritage, Hungary: member (2007-2009), president (2010)
Foundation “Oscar Montelius” chairperson (2014-2019)