Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2015
The author argues that Colin Renfrew’s farming language dispersal hypothesis for the spread of the Indo-European languages is unverifiable, and rests on dubious theoretical and methodological assumptions. Archaeology is better at recognising institutions than language, and present knowledge defines the Bronze Age, rather than the early Neolithic, as the formative period for the development and spread of so-called of Proto- and Early Indo-European institutions.