Introduction
The farming/language dispersals hypothesis, most simply put, proposes that many of the world’s most significant language families – in both geographical range and speaker numbers – dispersed along with, and primarily thanks to, the spread of agriculture. The entry on “Farming-Language Dispersals: Principles” in this encyclopedia explores the range of issues and qualifications that attend this general hypothesis, to clarify those cases in which one might in principle expect that it would or would not hold true. Much necessarily hangs on the particular “real-world” contexts – cultural, chronological, and geographical – through which each of the world’s major language families dispersed. Given the great diversity in those variables in the human story worldwide, the hypothesis duly does not play out consistently from case to case, or in others simply does not apply at all. Such is what this contribution now aims to survey, across the globe.
The first main exposition of the...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bellwood, P. 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural societies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bellwood, P. & C. Renfrew. (ed.) 2002. Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Bouckaert, R., P. Lemey, M. Dunn, S.J. Greenhill, A.V. Alekseyenko, A.J. Drummond, R.D. Gray, M.A. Suchard & Q.D. Atkinson. 2012. Mapping the origins and expansion of the Indo-European language family. Science 337(6097): 957–60. doi: 10.1126/science.1219669.
Campbell, L. & W.J. Poser. 2008. Language classification: history and method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Filippo, C., K. Bostoen, M. Stoneking & B. Pakendorf. 2012. Bringing together linguistic and genetic evidence to test the Bantu expansion. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0318.
Dixon, R.M.W. 1997. The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W. & A.Y. Aikhenvald. 1999. The Amazonian languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Donohue, M. & T. Denham. 2010. Farming and language in Island Southeast Asia: reframing Austronesian history. Current Anthropology 51(2): 223–56. doi: 10.1086/650991.
Ehret, C. 2002. The civilizations of Africa: a history to 1800. Oxford: James Currey.
Fuller, D.Q. 2002. An agricultural perspective on Dravidian historical linguistics: archaeological crop packages, livestock and Dravidian crop vocabulary, in P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew (ed.) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis: 191–213. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Gray, R.D., A.J. Drummond & S.J. Greenhill. 2009. Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement. Science 323(5913): 479. doi: 10.1126/science.1166858.
Güldemann, T. 2008. A linguist’s view: Khoe-Kwadi speakers as the earliest food-producers of southern Africa, in K. Sadr & F.-X. Fauvelle-Aymar (ed.) Southern African Humanities 20 (Special Issue): 93–132.
Heggarty, P. & D. Beresford-Jones. 2010. Agriculture and language dispersals: limitations, refinements, and an Andean exception? Current Anthropology 51(2): 163–91. doi: 10.1086/650533.
Higham, C. 2002. Languages and farming dispersals: Austroasiatic languages and rice cultivation, in P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew (ed.) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis: 223–32. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Hill, J.H. 2002. Proto-Uto-Aztecan cultivation and the northern devolution, in P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew (ed.) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis: 331–40. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Janhunen, J. 1996. Manchuria: an ethnic history. Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian Society.
Kaufman, T. & J. Justeson. 2009. Historical linguistics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20(2): 221–31. doi: 10.1017/S0956536109990113.
Mallory, J.P. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames & Hudson.
Militarev, A. 2002. The prehistory of a dispersal: the proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon, in P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew (ed.) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis: 135–51. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Pawley, A. 2005. The chequered career of the Trans New Guinea hypothesis: recent research and its implications, in A. Pawley, R. Attenborough, J. Golson & R. Hide (ed.) Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples: 67–107. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: Jonathan Cape.
Renfrew, C. & P. Bahn. (ed.) forthcoming. The Cambridge world prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Heggarty, P., Beresford-Jones, D. (2014). Farming-Language Dispersals: A Worldwide Survey. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2308
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2308
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law