Renfrew Colin. Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. — xiv + 346 p. — ISBN: 0-521-35432-3.In this book Colin Renfrew directs remarkable new light on the links between archaeology and language, looking at the puzzling similarities that are apparent across the Indo-European family of ancient languages, from Anatolia and Ancient Persia, across Europe and the Indian subcontinent, to regions as remote as Sinkiang in China.
He initiates an original synthesis between modern historical linguistics and the New Archaeology of cultural process, boldly proclaiming that it is time to reconsider questions of language origins and what they imply about ethnic affiliation-issues seriously discredited by the racial theorists of the 1920s and 1930s and largely neglected since.
Challenging many familiar beliefs, Professor Renfrew comes to a new and persuasive conclusion: that primitive forms of the Indo-European language were spoken across Europe some thousands of years earlier than has previously been assumed. There was, in particular, no ‘coming of the Celts’, but rather a parallel development of Celtic-speaking peoples in much the same areas in which they are found today.
In all likelihood, as Colin Renfrew shows, the indigenous roots of the peoples of Europe lie deeper in the mists of time than anyone has ever imagined.Review by Jim Mallory.
Review by K.R. Norman.
Review by Current Anthropology.
Review by Jay H. Jasanoff.
Review by Joseph H. Greenberg.
Review by John F. Healey.
Review by Marija Gimbutas.Preface: What Song the Sirens Sang.
The Indo-European Problem in Outline.
Archaeology and the Indo-Europeans.
Lost Languages and Forgotten Scripts: The Indo-European Languages, Old and New.
Homelands in Question.
Language and Language Change.
Language, Population and Social Organization: A Processual Approach.
Early Language Dispersals in Europe.
The Early Indo-Iranian Languages and their Origins.
Ethnogenesis: Who were the Celts?
Indo-European Mythologies.
Archaeology and Indo-European Origins: An Assessment.