Since we are taking an archaeological perspective on numbers, our interest in language is relatively narrow. Language can provide insight into the use of the fingers as a material device for counting, as well as whether ancient peoples shared the perceptual experience of quantity that influences form and function in the material devices that follow the fingers. Language can also reveal something about the processes through which numbers emerge and become elaborated, particularly in the form of characteristics indicating that ancient numbers emerged and elaborated through the same processes observable today in contemporary peoples. Finally, language can provide a basis for estimating relative age in numbers, albeit with several caveats.