Call for abstracts

Linguistic data can be used to generate insights into the prehistorical past alongside the data from archeology and/or historical genetics. The traditional approach here has always been toponymy, at the interface between archaeology and historical linguistic (e.g. studies of the Latvian toponymy at least since Bielenstein 1892). Toponymic etymologies provided valuable insights into the cultural history of various geographical areas.

However, more recently other venues have been put forward. Different linguistic disciplines (protolanguage reconstruction, sociolinguistics, dialectology, contact and areal linguistics) provide matches for different historical disciplines interpreting archaeological data, including paleontology, biological genetics, historical sociology studies, linguistic anthropology, history of contacts, conflicts, and cultural borrowings (see, e.g., the notion of linguistic archaeology in Carling 2024 for the most recent and extensive treatment of this concept and methods related thereto; and, vice versa, a methodological model for archaeological theory linking it with linguistic hermeneutics is proposed in Buccelatti 2012). Earlier studies include here, e.g., research on the Indo-European urheimat, with methodology extended also to other major linguistic families (cf. Ehret 1976) to the interdisciplinary turn of the recent decades (inter alia, Syrjänen et al. 2016; Kristiansen & Kroonen 2023; cf. Blench 2014 for a critical overview; Peterson et al. 2022 on comparability). Recently, a number of linguistic studies with the focus on homelands and expansion routes of the world’s major language families have been produced, which are increasingly characterized by quantitative approaches (Heggarty 2007, 2008, Greenhill et al. 2020, just to mention a few). There are also a number of problematic methodological issues that have been discussed. For example, Saarikivi & Lavento (2012) discussed the problem with strictly localized material data in archeology vs. linguistics, where language is a portable object and is spread far beyond the excavated sites.

Furthermore, linguistic research on migrations along specific geographical patterns such as islands or rivers have been carried out. Rivers may represent communication arteries, especially in Eastern Europe, where they represent the main gateways for trading flows between Scandinavia and southern and south-eastern continental Europe. This conference aims at combining specific studies that are devoted to the reconstruction of the prehistorical past on the basis of linguistic data with the focus on methodology and area-specific studies such as the Daugava river.

We would like to further promote these and other possible approaches to reconstructing past with linguistic data. We encourage submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following questions: 

- methods and data to explore prehistorical past of particular areas including research on migrations, ethnic or social composition of past societies

- how to combine linguistic evidence with the archeological and/or genetic evidence in order to produce reliable conclusions

- how to combine the traditional toponymic research with quantitative approaches

- specific case studies on particular areas and locations

- research on human past along the Daugava river

References

Bielenstein, August. 1892. Die Grenzen des lettischen Volksstammes und der lettischen Sprache in der Gegenwart und im 13. Jahrhundert. Ein Beitrag zur ethnologischen Geographie und Geschichte Russlands. St. Petersburg.

Blench, Roger M. (2014). Language and archaeology  --State of the art. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, pp. 661 - 685

Buccelatti, Giorgio (2012). Towards a linguistic model for archaeology. Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 106 (1), 37—43

Carling, Gerd (2024). Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction and Methodological Guide. New York: Routledge.

Ehret, Christopher. (1976). Linguistic evidence and its correlation with archaeology. World Archaeology, 8(1), 5–18.

Greenhill, Simon J., et al. (2023). A recent northern origin for the Uto-Aztecan family. Language 99 (1), 81-107. 

Heggarty, Paul (2007). Linguistics for archaeologists (1): principles, methods and the case of the Incas. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17:3, 311–40

Heggarty, Paul (2008). Linguistics for archaeologists (2): a case-study in the Andes. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18:1, 35–56

Kristiansen, Kristian & Kroonen, Guus (2023). Re-theorizing Interdisciplinarity, and the Relation between Archaeology, Linguistics, and Genetics. In: Kristiansen K, Kroonen G, Willerslev E, eds. The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press; 2023:3-10.

Peterson, John A., Nicole Taylor, Ilja A. Seržant, Henny Piezonka, Ariba Hidayet Khan, Norbert Nübler (2022). Connecting linguistics and archaeology in the study of identity: A first exploration. In: Johannes Müller (ed.), Connectivity Matters! Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies. Leiden: Sidestone Press. 139-164.

Saarikivi, Janne & Mika Lavento (2012). Linguistics and Archaeology: A Critical View of an Interdisciplinary Approach with Reference to the Prehistory of Northern Scandinavia . Networks, Interaction and Emerging Identities in Fennoscandia and Beyond. Tromsø, Norway, October 13-16 2009. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia = Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 265, 177-216.

Syrjänen, K., T. Honkola, J. Lehtinen, A. Leino & O. Vesakoski (2016). Applying population genetic approaches within languages: Finnish dialects as linguistic populations. Language Dynamics and Change 6. 235-283.