Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-6vlrh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T23:13:54.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A social prehistory of European languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John Robb
John Robb*
Affiliation:
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Consistent to most views of Indo-European in later European prehistory is a genetic focus. The blanket of related languages across Europe marks an equal human spread – whether of steppe warriors, Beaker burialists or slashing-and-burning farmers. What if the languages are reconstructed using other premisses than this ‘genealogical’ view?

Information

Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 67 , Issue 257 , December 1993 , pp. 747 - 760
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ammerman, A. & Cavalli-Sforza, L.. 1984. The Neolithic transition and the genetics of populations in Europe. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, E. 1974. Indo-European language and society. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Bogucki, P. 1988. Forest farmers and stockherders: early agriculture and its consequences in north-central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L., Piazza, A. & Menozzi, P.. 1993. Demic expansions and human evolution, Science 259: 639–46.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. (ed.). 1982. Language spread: studies in diffusion and social change. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. 1975a. Southeastern Indian languages, in Crawford (1975b): 1–120.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. (Ed.). 1975b. Studies in southeastern Indian languages. Athens (GA): University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Crawford, J. 1978. The Mobilian trade language. Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Crumley, C. 1974. Celtic social structure. Ann Arbor (MI): Museum of Anthropology. Anthropological Paper 54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, D. & Goodwin, R.C.. 1990. Island Carib origins: evidence and nonevidence, American Antiquity 55: 37–48.Google Scholar
De Voto, G. 1978. The languages of Italy. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Diakonoff, I.M. 1976. Ancient writing and ancient written language: pitfalls and peculiarities in the study of Sumerian, in Lieberman, S.J. (ed.), Sumerological studies in honor of Thorkild Jacobsen: 99–121. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dreschel, E. 1977. Metacommunicative functions of Mobilian Jargon, an American Indian pidgin of the lower Mississippi River region, in Gilbert, G. (ed.), Pidgin and creole languages: 433–44. Honolulu (HI): University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Dreschel, E. 1981. A preliminary sociolinguistic comparison of four indigenous pidgin languages of North America with notes towards a sociolinguistic typology in American Indian linguistics, Anthropological Linguistics 23: 93–112.Google Scholar
Dutton, T. 1978. Language and trade in central and southeast Papua, Mankind 11: 341–53.Google Scholar
Dutton, T. 1983. Birds of a feather: a pair of rare pidgins from the Gulf of Papua, in Woolford, E. & Washabaugh, W. (ed.), The social context of creolization: 77–105. Ann Arbor (MI): Karoma.Google Scholar
Ehret, C. 1988. Language change and the material correlates of langnage and ethnic shift, Antiquity 62: 564–73.Google Scholar
Farr, S. 1993. Gender and ethnogenesis in the early colonial Lesser Antilles. Paper prepared for the 15th Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archeology, San Juan, Puerto Rico.Google Scholar
Feil, D. 1987. The evolution of Highland Papua New Guinea societies. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankenstein, S. & Rowlands, M.. 1972. The internal structure and regional context of early Iron Age society in southwest Germany, Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 15: 73–112.Google Scholar
Gailey, C. & Patterson, T.. 1988. State formation and uneven development, in Gledhill, J., Bender, B. & Larsen, M. (ed.), State and society: 77–90. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Gamble, C. 1982. Interaction and alliance in Palaeolithic society, Man 17: 92–107.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 1981. The development of social stratification in Bronze Age Europe, Current Anthropology 22: 1–24.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 1991. Trajectories towards social complexity in the later prehistory of the Mediterranean, in Earle, T. (ed.), Chiefdoms: power, economy, ideology: 146–68. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1973. The first wave of Eurasian steppe pastoralists into Copper Age Europe, Journal of Indo-European Studies 5: 277–338.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1980. The Kurgan Wave 2 (c. 3400-3200 BC) into Europe and the following transformation of culture, Journal of Indo-European Studies 8: 273–315.Google Scholar
Goddard, I. 1971. The ethnohistorical implications of early Delaware linguistic materials, Man in the Northeast 1: 14–26.Google Scholar
Haas, M. 1975. What is Mobilian?, in Crawford (1975b): 257–65.Google Scholar
Haselgrove, C. 1987. Culture process on the periphery: Belgic Gaul and Rome during the late Republic and early Empire, in Rowlands et al. (1987): 104–24.Google Scholar
Heath, S.B. & Laprade, R.. 1982. Castilian colonization and indigenous languages: the cases of Quechua and Aymara, in Cooper (1982): 118–17.Google Scholar
Helm, J. (ed.). 1981. Handbook of North American Indians 6: Subarctic. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Helms, M. 1983. Ulysses’ sail. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, J. 1978. Language contact systems and human adaptations, Journal of Anthropological Research 34: 1–26.Google Scholar
Hoch, H. 1991. Principles of historical linguistics. 2nd edition. New York (NY): Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Holm, J. 1988. Pidgins and creóles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, J. 1983. The fish people: linguistic exogamy and Tukanoan identity in northwest Amazonia. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krauss, M. & Colla, V.. 1981. Northern Athapaskan languages, in Helm (1981): 67–85.Google Scholar
Laycock, D. 1982. Melanesian linguistic diversity: a Melanesian choice? in May, R.J. & Nelson, H. (ed.), Melanesia: beyond diversity 1: 33–8. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Mallory, J. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Nash, D. 1987. Imperial expansion under the Roman Republic, in Rowlands et al. (1987): 87–103.Google Scholar
Paper, H. 1982. Language spread: the ancient Near Eastern world, in Cooper (1982): 107–17.Google Scholar
Pulgram, E. 1958. The tongues of Italy. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pulgram, E. 1978. Italic, Latin, Italian: 600 BC to AD 1260. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1992. Archaeology, genetics and linguistic diversity, Man 27: 445–78.Google Scholar
Rhodes, R. 1982. Algonquian trade languages, in Papers of the 13th Algonquian Conference: 1–10. Ottawa: Carleton University Press.Google Scholar
Rhodes, R. & Todd, E.. 1981. Subarctic Algonquian languages, in Helm (1981): 52–66.Google Scholar
Robb, J. 1991. Random causes with directed results: the Indo-European spread and the stochastic loss of lineages, Antiquity 65: 287–91.Google Scholar
Robb, J. 1992. Gender ideology and social evolution in prehistoric Italy. Paper presented at the Society for American Archeology meetings, Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Robins, R. & Uhlenbeck, E. (ed.). 1991. Endangered languages. New York (NY): St Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Rowlands, M., Larsen, M. & Kristiansen, K.. 1987. Centre and periphery in the ancient world. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Salisbury, R. 1962. Notes on bilingualism and linguistic change in New Guinea, Anthropological Linguistics 4(7): 1–13.Google Scholar
Shennan, S. 1982. Ideology, change and the European Bronze Age, in Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and structural archaeology: 155–61. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shennan, S. 1986. Interaction and change in third millennium BC western and central Europe, in Cherry, J. & Renfrew, C. (ed.), Peer polity interaction: 137–48. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A. 1981. Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products revolution, in Hodder, I., Isaac, G. & Hammond, N. (ed.), Pattern of the past: 261–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A. & Sherratt, S.. 1988. The archaeology of Indo-European: an alternative view, Antiquity 62: 584–95.Google Scholar
Taylor, A. 1981. Indian lingua francas, in Ferguson, C. & Heath, S. (ed.), Language in the USA: 175–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. & Hoff, B.. 1980. The linguistic repertory of the Island Carib in the seventeenth century: the men’s language – a Carib pidgin?, International Journal of Linguistics 46: 301–12.Google Scholar
Terrell, J. 1988. History as a family tree, history as an entangled bank: constructing images and interpretations of prehistory in the South Pacific, Antiquity 62: 642–57.Google Scholar
Thomason, S. 1983. Chinook jargon in areal and linguistic context, Language 59: 820–70.Google Scholar
Thomason, S. & Kaufman, T.. 1988. Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, L. & Kinkade, M.D.. 1990. Languages, in Suttles, W. (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians 7: Northwest coast: 30–51. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Thorpe, I. & Richards, C.. 1984. The decline of ritual authority and the introduction of beakers into Britain, in Bradley, R. & Gardiner, J.. (ed.), Neolithic studies: 67–78. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. British series 133.Google Scholar
Trubetzkoy, N. 1939. Gedanken über das Indogermanenproblem, Acta Linguistica Copenhagen 1: 81–9.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. 1972. Sex, covert prestige, and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich, Language in Society 1: 179–95.Google Scholar
Voegelin, C. & Voegelin, F.. 1966. Map of North American Indian languages. Seattle (WA): University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Whallon, R. 1989. Elements of cultural change in the Upper Palaeolithic, in Mellars, P. & Stringer, C. (ed.), The human revolution: 433–54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Wobst, H.M. 1974. Boundary conditions for Paleolithic social systems: a simulation approach, American Antiquity 39: 147–78.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. 1982. Europe and the people without history. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Woodbury, A. 1984. Eskimo and Aleut languages, in Damas, D. (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians 5: Arctic: 49–63. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Zvelebil, M. & Zvelebil, L.. 1988. Agricultural transition and Indo-European dispersals, Antiquity 62: 574–83.Google Scholar