Linguistics for Archaeologists: Principles, Methods and the Case of the Incas

Linguistics for Archaeologists Linguistics for Archaeologists: Principles, Methods and the Case of the Incas Paul Heggarty1 Like archaeologists, linguists and geneticists too use the data and methods of their dis‑ ciplines to open up their own windows onto our past. These disparate visions of human prehistory cry out to be reconciled into a coherent holistic scenario, yet progress has long been frustrated by interdisciplinary disputes and misunderstandings (not least about Indo‑European). In this article, a comparative‑historical linguist sets out, to his intended audience of archaeologists, the core principles and methods of his discipline that are of relevance to theirs. They are first exemplified for the better‑known languages of Europe, before being put into practice in a lesser‑known case‑study. This turns to the New World, setting its greatest indigenous ‘Empire’, that of the Incas, alongside its greatest surviving language family today, Quechua. Most Andean archaeologists assume a straightforward association between these two. The linguistic evidence, however, exposes this as nothing but a popular myth, and writes instead a wholly new script for the prehistory of the Andes — which now awaits an archaeological story to match. 1. Archaeology and linguistics genetic methods from the biological sciences now being applied to language data. In a much discussed Recent years have seen growing interest in a ‘new syn- paper in Nature, Gray & Atkinson (2003) put forward thesis’ between the disciplines of archaeology, genetics a phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages, and linguistics, at the point where all three intersect based on comparative vocabulary lists, which falls in seeking a coherent picture of the distant origins of neatly in line with the ‘out of Anatolia’ hypothesis. human populations. Such research has been dogged, In particular they propose a new dating mechanism however, by interdisciplinary controversy, such as which supports Renfrew’s chronology, much earlier that surrounding Renfrew’s (1987) hypothesis that the than the one traditionally adhered to by most Indo- Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia. The Europeanist linguists, who have duly reacted with logic behind his proposal is that the dominance and considerable scepticism. territorial range achieved by this single language fam- Recurrent in the controversies have been sug- ily are so striking as to demand explanation in terms gestions, from one side or the other, of a number of of some ‘empowering’ cultural force of commensurate serious misunderstandings between the disciplines. In significance, whose impact should therefore be clearly such a context, this article seeks to contribute one part visible in the archaeological record too. The motor of the story, by setting out to an audience of archaeolo- that Renfrew looks to for the early expansion of Indo- gists the basic principles and methods of linguistics European is indeed a simple, powerful one: agricul- that are of relevance and value to their own discipline. ture. This association, hotly debated, illustrates one of We look at how it is that data from languages can the key levels on which linguistics and archaeology be analysed so as to enable us to look into the past, necessarily interact. specifically the prehistory of the human populations Controversies have continued into the latest that spoke those languages. The focus is on the key phase of the new synthesis, which has seen phylo- questions of how, and how reliably, we can establish Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17:3, 311–40 © 2007 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research doi:10.1017/S095977430700039X Printed in the United Kingdom. 311 Paul Heggarty both time-frames and locations for the various stages troversial. More specifically though, this article aspires in the expansions of major language families. to be useful further afield, in other regions where new On a general level, then, this article aims to pro- synthesis work is not yet so well advanced and where mote a greater understanding of the main issues to the relevant linguistic principles and methods have all be faced whenever we seek to correlate linguistic and the more still to contribute. As an ideal case study for archaeological scenarios for the history of any pop- illustrating them to a general archaeological audience, ulations. The discussion here is therefore relevant and we turn to a part of the world where our two disciplines applicable to all cases, including the best studied and do still have a great deal to learn from each other: the most frequently discussed ones like the Austronesian rich archaeological hunting-ground of the central An- and Indo-European expansions — the former a para- des, in particular Peru and northern Bolivia. This region digm case of a relatively straightforward agreement has been conspicuous by its absence from previous col- between the two disciplines’ scenarios (or at least, the lections of work on correlations between archaeology majority position in each), the latter much more con- and language, such as Blench & Spriggs (1997; 1998). Here, in the absence of any linguistic or historical records from pre-Columbian times, the time-scales of archaeology and linguistics overlap particularly closely, and at a relatively recent time-depth over which linguistic methods are at their most precise and reliable. And yet to archaeologists of the region, the linguists’ tale of the Andes invariably comes as quite a shock, if not to say a revelation. For it parts company radically with the straightforward assumptions still current among most researchers of other disciplines, even those who specialize in the Andes, as to which languages are associated with which cultures. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of the biggest surviving indigenous language family of the New World, Quechua, and its popular association with the most extensive and last of the great Andean civilizations, that of the Incas. 1.1. Associating archaeological cultures with languages: first impressions It is true that in this case geography alone immediately suggests what looks like an obvious and straightforward correlation, as can be seen by comparing the extents of the Inca Empire in Figure 1 and the current distribution of the Que- chua language family in Figure 2. There is a strikingly close match in that the regions where Quechua survives today (and those where it has become extinct since the European conquest) almost all fall within the extent of the Incas’ realm. Figure 1. Archaeology of the central Andes as discussed in this text. It is widely known, moreover, that the 312 Linguistics for Archaeologists Incas instituted Quechua as the language of admin- themselves originally spoke not Quechua at all, istration for their empire. There is even a ‘vertical’, but a (now extinct) regional form of the other main topographical correlation too: Quechua, at least in surviving language family of the Andes, Aymara, its current distribution, is very much a language of and perhaps at an even earlier stage Puquina. the highlands, rather than the narrow strip of desert A host of similar misconceptions surround Aymara along the coast or the Amazon rainforest. So it seems too, following a popular assumption that associates to fit that the Incas’ capital city Cuzco lies high in the it with the Tiwanaku culture as the homeland and Andes, at 3400 m. motor for its expansion, but which again seems quite On the strength of all these correlations, which mistaken on the linguistic evidence. also fall in line with certain local ethnic and political The Andes would indeed seem to offer a few interests, the standard popular assumption has been object lessons, then, in both how and how not to go to associate Quechua directly with the Incas. Many if about bringing together linguistic and archaeological not most archaeologists of the Andes also hold to this scenarios. Certainly, the linguists of the region appear view, seeing the Cuzco region as Que- chua’s point of origin, its ‘homeland’, and the Inca period or Late Horizon as the timescale for its expansion (i.e. start- ing from as late as 1476, according to one commonly-used dating for the first major Inca expansion). 1.2. Quechua and the Incas? Exploding the myths And yet these and a number of other widely-held assumptions are, for specialists in Quechua linguistics, patently mistaken. A number of popular myths urgently need to be de- bunked, among them the following: • Quechua is by no means a single language, but a broader family of mutually unintelligible tongues. • Much of Quechua’s territorial expansion owes nothing whatever to the Incas, but predates them by centuries in some areas, a millennium or more in others. • The Quechua family appears to have originated nowhere near Cuzco, but far to the northwest, somewhere in central Peru. Its expansion from there took place over an extended time-scale of the order of a couple of millennia, and was largely complete well before the Incas’ relatively very late entry on the Andean scene. • Quechua did not even reach the Cuzco region until shortly before the Inca period, when its gradual south- ward spread finally brought it as far as Cuzco itself. • Perhaps most disconcerting of all, it may well be that the Inca nobility Figure 2. The Quechua language family: present‑day distribution. 313 Paul Heggarty to have signally failed to make even the fundamentals distant relationships between language families put of their field at all widely known outside it, with the forward by only a fringe minority of linguists whose result that most specialists in other disciplines are supposed linguistic classifications are comprehensive- proceeding unaware of even the most basic linguistic ly dismissed by the linguistic consensus. Among these facts. Many archaeologists have continued working are notably Greenberg’s (1987) proposed three-way with assumptions about the Andean languages and classification of the languages of the Americas, the their associations with archaeological cultures which, Nostratic hypothesis and purported reconstructions while apparently entirely straightforward, are all the of a ‘Proto-World’ ancestor language (e.g.

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