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Before Babel A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Norman Yoffee
Norman Yoffee
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
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Abstract

Editorial summary. This paper began as a review of Renfrew, Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (1987). It was expanded with a further review, of Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989). It has ended by considering not only the books in question, but also wider issues of the relationship between archaeological and linguistic evidence.

The hypothesis of Renfrew for an early dispersal of Indo-European speakers from Anatolia with the spread of farming from the 7th millennium bc is contrasted with the view of Mallory that Indo-European speakers emerged from a diverse background in a broad homeland between the Pontic and Caspian Seas in the period 4500–2500 bc. One major difficulty, among many others, for Renfrew's view is that there is no historical evidence for Indo-Europeans in western Asia until the early 2nd millennium bc; the Indo-European-speaking Hittites appear to have been intrusive into Anatolia only slightly before this time and to have made use of the non-Indo-European language of the indigenous Hatti; and in Iran, Indo-European speakers may not have appeared until the end of the 2nd millennium bc.

Both Renfrew and Mallory are seen to seek congruence between the archaeological and linguistic records. The opposite view is argued, that historical, linguistic and archaeological evidence each represent different kinds of human behaviour. The metaphor is employed of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, three-dimensional and with past, present and future, and possessing both picture and text; picture and text each require separate specialists in their reconstruction. The independence and importance of archaeological evidence is reaffirmed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 56 , 1990 , pp. 299 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1990

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