Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins

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CUP Archive, Jan 26, 1990 - History - 346 pages
In this book Colin Renfrew directs remarkable new light on the links between archaeology and language, looking specifically at the puzzling similarities that are apparent across the Indo-European family of ancient languages, from Anatolia and Ancient Persia, across Europe and the Indian subcontinent, to regions as remote as Sinkiang in China. Professor Renfrew initiates an original synthesis between modern historical linguistics and the new archaeology of cultural process, boldly proclaiming that it is time to reconsider questions of language origins and what they imply about ethnic affiliation--issues seriously discredited by the racial theorists of the 1920s and 1930s and, as a result, largely neglected since. Challenging many familiar beliefs, he comes to a new and persuasive conclusion: that primitive forms of the Indo-European language were spoken across Europe some thousands of years earlier than has previously been assumed.
 

Contents

The IndoEuropean Problem in Outline
9
Archaeology and the IndoEuropeans
20
TABLES
45
Homelands in Question
75
Language and Language Change
99
Early Language Dispersals in Europe
145
The Early IndoIranian Languages and their Origins
177
Who were the Celts?
211
IndoEuropean Mythologies
250
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