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ARCHAEOLOGY and LANGUAGE the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins

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ARCHAEOLOGY and LANGUAGE the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins COLIN RENFREW Penguin Books To the memory of my father, ARCHIBALD RENFREW PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3111B4 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published by Jonathan Cape 1987 Published in Penguin Books 1989 13579 10 8642 Copyright © Colin Renfrew, 1987 All rights reserved Filmset in Bembo (Linotron 202) by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser PEREGRINE BOOKS ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE Colin Renfrew was born in 1937 and studied natural sciences and archaeology at Cambridge, graduating with first-class honours. While at Cambridge, he was President of the Union. He travelled in Eastern Europe and in Spain and then undertook fieldwork in the Cycladic Islands of Greece. In collaboration with Professor J. D. Evans, he led an expedition to excavate the first stone age settlement to be discovered on the Cyclades. In 1969 and 1970 he was field director of the Anglo-American excavations at the important prehistoric settlement mound at Sitagroi in North Greece, and from 1974 until 1976 he directed the excavations at the bronze age town of Phylakopi on the Cycladic island of Melos. He was a research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, from 1965 to 1968, has lectured in European prehistory at the University of Sheffield and at the University of California at Los Angeles and was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) for ten years until 1987 and is a member of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee. Professor Renfrew was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1980. He has been Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, since 1986 and is Disney Professor of Archaeology at the university. As well as contributing scientific papers to Nature, Scientific American and archaeological journals, he has written and edited many publications on archaeology. His own books include The Emergence of Civilization (1972), Before Civilization (1973, Pelican 1976), Problems in European Prehistory (1979), Approaches to Social Archaeology (1984), The Prehistory of Orkney (1985) and The Archaeology of Cult (1985), and he has edited The Explanation of Culture Change (1973), British Prehistory, a New Outline (1974) and Theory and Explanation in Archaeology (1982). He has also co-authored several works. Contents Acknowledgments xiü Preface: What Song the Sirens Sang i 1 The Indo-European Problem in Outline 9 2 Archaeology and the Indo-Europeans 20 3 Lost Languages and Forgotten Scripts: The Indo-European Languages, Old and New 42 4 Homelands in Question 75 5 Language and Language Change 99 6 Language, Population and Social Organization: A Processual Approach 120 7 Early Language Dispersals in Europe 145 8 The Early Indo-Iranian Languages and their Origins 178 9 Ethnogenesis: Who were the Celts? 211 10 Indo-European Mythologies 250 11 Archaeology and Indo-European Origins: An Assessment 263 Notes 291 Bibliography 307 Index 337 Illustrations page 2. i Geometric vase from Thera c. 750 BC (after Finley) 25 2.2 Sword scabbard from La Tene c. 300 BC 26 2.3 Corded ware from northern and eastern Europe 31 2.4 Beaker assemblages 32 2.5 Linear-decorated pottery 36 2.6 The homeland area of the Kurgan culture (after Gimbutas) 40 3.1 Cuneiform script at Persepolis 44 3.2 Copy of a hieroglyphic Hittite inscription 48 3.3 Map of the principal Indo-European language groups of Europe and Asia 52 3.4 Map of Anatolia in the second millennium BC 54 3.5 Map of the Aegean, with Minoan and Mycenaean sites 58 3.6 Minoan Linear B script 60 3.7 Map of the Old Silk Road 63 4.1 The evidence of linguistic palaeontology for the homeland of the Indo-Europeans 79 4.2 The distribution of Bell Beakers in Europe 87 5.1 The family tree model for the Indo-European languages 101 5.2 Distribution of the Indo-European languages seen in terms of the wave theory 105 5.3 The use of lexicostatistical data to infer history of linguistic descent 113 5.4 Relationships between different Indo-European languages based on glottochronological correlations 116 6.1 Population growth curves 127 6.2 The wave of advance model 127 6.3 Computer simulation of the wave of advance 128 6.4 Diagram (a) to show system collapse 134 6.5 Diagram (b) to show system collapse 135 7.1 Emmer wheat, einkorn and six-row barley 146 ILLUSTRATIONS VU 7-2 Modern distribution in the Near East of the wild prototype of domesticated einkorn U7 7-3 Modern distribution in the Near East of the wild prototype of domesticated barley 148 7-4 Radiocarbon dates for the spread of farming economy to Europe 149 7-5 The impact of farming on the existing mesolithic communities of north-west Europe along the 'Atlantic facade' 151 7-6 The early spread of farming in Europe 155 7-7 Hypothetical sequence of cultural and linguistic transformations during the early spread of farming in Europe 160 7.8 Stamp seals from Anatolia and Europe 169 7-9 The original area of the Anatolian early farming culture 170 8.1 The Indus script on copper tablets from Mohenjodaro 184 8.2 Map of India indicating sites of the Indus Valley civilization 186 8-3 Decorated antler cheek-pieces for horse-bits c. 2000-1800 BC 199 8.4 Map of proposed alternative origins for the Indo-Aryan languages 206 9-i Map indicating notional Celtic lands 213 9.2 The Botorrita tablet 230 9-3 The early linguistic population of Iberia 231 9-4 The evidence of Celtic place names 237 II. I Map of the Pacific showing the major Austronesian linguistic divisions 278 II.2 Family tree diagram for the Fijian and Polynesian languages 279 II-3 Diagram indicating the chronology of Pacific island discovery by founding populations 280 il.4 Map showing the dispersal of the Bantu languages of Africa 282 The Indo-European languages in Europe and Asia Indo-European Languages ||| Indo-Iranian j Armenian Slavonic | Albanian Germanic Celtic Romance/Italic (Formerly Celtic) Baltic 1^^^ (Tocharian) Greek (and former Greek) fc^j (Hittite) w The Principal Language Families of the Modern World (after Lehmann) [~ "J n ii European f : 1 Sino-Tibetan [ j Afro-Asiatic '1 Dravidian [ ·•·- ~] Altaic Austro-Asiatic | | Finno-Ugric Acknowledgments Many people have contributed to this volume, and I have benefited from discussions over the years with a great number of friends and colleagues, since the first two articles published in 1973 and 1978 when my ideas began to take shape. Amongst them I should like to express my gratitude for stimulating discussions to: Dr John Alexander, Dr Raymond Allchin, Dr Paul Bahn, Professor Lewis Binford, Professor L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, Dr John Chadwick, Dr Sara Champion and Dr Timothy Champion, Dr David Collett, Professor R. A. Crossland, M. Jean-Paul Demoule, Professor Sir Kenneth Dover, Dr David French, Professor Ernest Gellner, Professor V. I. Georgiev, Dr I. Gershevitch, Professor Christopher Hawkes, Mr Sinclair Hood, Dr Teresa Judice Gamito, Sir John Lyons, Professor Peter Matthews, Mr N. J. Merriman, Dr Roger Moorey, DrK. R. Norman, Mr Sebastian Payne, Mr John Ray, Dr Robert C. Reed, Dr Jane M. Renfrew, Dr Anne Ross, Dr M. J. Rowlands, Dr Stephen Shennan, Dr Andrew Sherratt, Mrs Eliza• beth Warren, Professor Peter Warren and Dr Patrick Sims Williams. Sir John Lyons, Mr John Ray, Dr Roger Moorey, Drjane Renfrew, Dr Chris Scarre and Dr Stephen Shennan have all kindly read the text and have offered valuable corrections and comments. Needless to say, not all of them agree with the views expressed here. Mrs Jose John kindly typed much of the final text, and Mr Malcolm Payne redrew several of the figures. Dr Chris Scarre has greatly assisted in assembling the plates, and I am particularly grateful for the patience and skill with which Mrsjenny Cottom has edited the work and seen it through the press. I should like to acknowledge the great stimulus offered by the work of Professor Marija Gimbutas, who has, in recent years, been the foremost and most consistent archaeologist to consider the origins of the Indo-European languages. I am much aware that my view of Indo-European origins is very different from her own, XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS but I am grateful for her friendship and for the intellectual excite• ment which her ideas have provoked. My father was a keen student of language. I have on my shelf his copy of Bodmer and Hogben's The Loom of Language which, as the annotations indicate, he read four times. He would greatly have enjoyed, and would no doubt have been keenly critical of, the discussions undertaken here, and this book is dedicated to his memory in affectionate gratitude. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for per• mission to reproduce figures.
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