Archaeology & Language - Couverture souple

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Renfrew, C

 
9780712666121: Archaeology & Language

Synopsis

Calling for a synthesis between modern historical linguistics and the New Archaeology of cultural process, Professor Renfrew boldly claims 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. Specifically, he re-examines the intriguing problem of the Indo-European languages and how their ancestors came to spread from Anatolia and ancient Persia across Europe and much of the Indian subcontinent, with evidence for related languages found as far away as sinkiang in China. The solution he proposes is powerfully persuasive and deeply surpri-sing. Professor Renfrew argues that ealy forms of Indo-European language were spoken across Europe some thousands of years earlier thanhas long been assumed. There was, for instance, no `coming of the celts' but a parallel development of Celtic-speaking peoples in much the same areas in which they found today. These lands have been our lands, then for very much longer than is widely thought, and the British ness, or Irishness, or Spanishness of our origins goes much deeper than we have long believed.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

Calling for a synthesis between modern historical linguistics and the New Archaeology of cultural process, Professor Renfrew boldly claims 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. Specifically, he re-examines the intriguing problem of the Indo-European languages and how their ancestors came to spread from Anatolia and ancient Persia across Europe and much of the Indian subcontinent, with evidence for related languages found as far away as sinkiang in China. The solution he proposes is powerfully persuasive and deeply surpri-sing. Professor Renfrew argues that ealy forms of Indo-European language were spoken across Europe some thousands of years earlier thanhas long been assumed. There was, for instance, no `coming of the celts' but a parallel development of Celtic-speaking peoples in much the same areas in which they found today. These lands have been our lands, then for very much longer than is widely thought, and the British ness, or Irishness, or Spanishness of our origins goes much deeper than we have long believed.

Revue de presse

'Mr. Renfrew has written this fascinating book to review the subject in general and to advance a revisionist idea about the mode and timing of the Indo-European spread.' Stephen Jay Gould, The New York Times Book Review

'Written for the nonspecialist, this book refreshens the mind with new information, rigorous analysis, scientific scruple, and critical panache.' Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

'The argument is lively and lucid, and the book deserves a wide readership among specialists and non-specialists alike. It is a daring thesis ... Renfrew is not afraid of dealing with big problems...an attempt to move archaeology forward and to break its isolation ... he has started another of those debates on which progress in archaeology depends.' Richard Bradley, Nature

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