Dating the final IE unity (was: Re: GREEK PREHISTORY AND LANGUAGE)

[Sean Crist]

In an earlier post, I suggested that the speakers of Greek entered Greece
around 2100-1900 BCE.  Steven Long suggested that the speakers of Greek
could have been in Greece as early as 7000 BCE, and cites Renfrew as a
source.

This issue is going to take some discussion.  Let me say up front that I'm
not an archaeologist.  I minored in archaeology as an undergrad and went
on several fairly boring digs as summer jobs, so I know something about
it; but I'm not a specialist in the field.

Anyway, let me start by giving some background.  When archaeology was
first getting off the ground a little over a century ago, it was
fashionable to explain everything in terms grand, prehistoric mass
migrations.  Lecturers describing the history of the field of archaeology
usually spread their arms wide and make the appropriate facial expression
at this point to indicate the grandiosity of this sort of explanation.

Today, most archaeologists would reject this general approach.  The major
contribution by Renfrew (and others) has been the approach known as
"process archaeology", wherein observed changes within a culture are
attributed to pressures within that culture.  For example, suppose we find
that in a particular area, there is a change in the archaeological record
from a fairly egalitarian society to one with marked differences in
wealth. Earlier archaeologists might take this as a sign of an invasion by
some prestige-oriented culture.  A process-type explanation, on the other
hand, might involve the rise in a culture's internal population density,
changes in the climate, etc., without positing any migration or other
influence from another culture.

This is a major advance in our understanding of prehistoric cultural
change.  Unfortunately, the pendulum swung too far in the opposite
direction; it came to be the case that positing _any_ prehistoric
migration _whatever_ was viewed with disdain.  Some archaeologists have
begun to argue that the rejection of prehistoric migrations has gone too
far. Around ten years ago, David Anthony wrote an article called "The Baby
and the Bathwater" in which he criticized this wholesale rejection of
prehistoric migrations.  He gave a reasonable and formal model for
predicting and explaining migrations in terms of push-pull pressures.
Mallory also argued against categorically rejecting prehistoric migrations
in "In Search of the Indo-Europeans".

With all of this background in mind, we can see the general ideological
framework which is leading Renfrew to seek the kind of solution which he
has done.  Renfrew wants to keep to an absolute minimum the number of
prehistoric migrations which we have to posit.  He'd probably prefer that
we not need to posit _any_ prehistoric migrations, but even Renfrew would
surely concede that the spread of a language over a large area implies a
population movement.  Technology in agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, etc.
can plausibly spread by diffusion without a large-scale movement of
populations; but language (other than loan words) does not diffuse this
way.  Verb conjugations, etc. only spread when speakers move.

So what Renfrew is trying to do is kill two birds with one stone.  Suppose
we assume that the introduction of the agricultural cultural complex thru
Europe is the result of a population movement from Anatolia to the Balkans
during the 7th millenium BCE (which Renfrew accepts).  We're also forced
to say that the spread of the Indo-European languages implies a population
movement.  Renfrew's response is to try to collapse these two migrations
into one, thus keeping the number of migrations to a minimum.  If you're
assuming that it's a bad thing to posit prehistoric migrations, this is
the sort of solution you'd like to try for.

Unfortunately, this solution cannot be made to work without ignoring a
huge amount of evidence.  An archaeologist here at Penn told me that he
was very "annoyed" at Renfrew for having put forward this view, and said
that if anyone with less than Renfrew's prestige had put it forward, it
simply would have been ignored as not worthy of consideration.  But
Renfrew's earlier contributions (i.e. to the notion of process
archaeology, to C-14 recalibrations, etc.) are so well respected that he
has to be answered.  He has been answered indeed.

Mallory (p. 164 ff.) discusses the whole issue at some length, and makes
the following arguments:

-Renfrew proposes that Anatolia is the homeland of the Indo-Europeans.  If
so, it is very odd the Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic existed in the midst of
languages (Hattic and Hurrian) which are not only not Indo-European but
which bear no typological resemblance to Indo-European. If there were any
language family which we might guess to be a sister of Indo-European, it
would be Finno-Ugric, which would argue for a Ukrainian homeland, not an
Anatolian one.

-There is clearly a substantial non-Indo-European substrate in Greek, both
in place names and in loan words.  This would be a bit surprising if
Indo-European speakers had been in the area since the beginning of the
Neolithic.

-Most importantly, placing the initial dispersion of the Indo-Europeans at
the beginning of the Neolithic around 6500 BCE in entirely incompatible
with the reconstructed Indo-European vocabulary.  Words such as yoke,
wheel, etc. are reconstructed for PIE, but this technology is not attested
until much, much later- namely, not much after 4000-3500 BCE, which is the
date which Mallory and others put forward as the final date of IE
linguistic unity.

So let's return now to Steve Long's post, which I will take the liberty of
reordering:

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> Based on the evidence above, there is nothing to preclude the conjecture
> that "Greeks were in Greece" during or even before the Neolithic.  If
> one connects PIE with the first appearance of agriculture (a la
> Renfrew), then that could move the date of "proto-Greek" or its
> ancestors being in mainland Greece back towards 7000BC.

I hope you see now why I find this entirely untenable.

> At this point in time, THERE IS NO MATERIAL EVIDENCE AT ALL AS TO WHEN
> GREEK-SPEAKERS APPEARED IN GREECE.  THE ONLY EVIDENCE OF A SIGNIFICANT
> MIGRATION DURING THIS PERIOD (3000BC-1650BC) IS FROM ANATOLIA.

[...]
> On10/6/99 12:48:29 AM, kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu wrote: << perhaps you
> mean that the Greek-speaking presence in what is now Greece goes back further
> than e.g. 2100-1900 BCE.  The most widely accepted view is that the
> destruction of sites which we find in that period represent the invasion of
> speakers of an early form of Greek.  The preceding cultural tradition in
> Greece is substantially different.>>
>
> I'm not sure what sites or culture are being spoken of above.  But there is
> no special break in "cultural tradition" - except one - that occurs during
> this time.  More importantly, there is a continuity in many aspects of the
> early Greek material culture that remain consistent right from the end of the
> Neolithic (about 3500BC) through to the end of the Middle Helladic (about
> 1500BC).

This is appears to be incorrect.  Between the Early Helladic II and Early
Helladic III phases (c. 2200 BCE), we find the following:

-Destruction and abandonment of Early Helladic II sites
-Changes in architecture, including appearance of houses with apsidal ends
-Changes in burial practice
-Appearance of stone "battle-axes" and clay "anchors"
-Appearance of a new pottery style, i.e. the Minyan ware
-Major change in economy to a much simpler agricultural society
(Mallory, p. 70)

You're correct that the culture in this area otherwise appears to have
been uninterrupted over a long period.  Giving the dates 2200-1900 BCE as
the date for "the coming of the Greeks" is certainly not without
ongoing controversy, but it seems to be the best candidate given what we
know now, and given the larger view of when and how the Indo-Europeans
dispersed.

[Much deleted]

> The main attributes of Middle Helladic (starting about 2000BC) e.g. Gray
> Minyan pottery and longhouses/megarons, are now viewed as CONTINUATIONS of
> Korakou or Tyrins  (which itself was a "fusion" culture.)  In the bad old
> days, Gray Minyon was associated with "the arrival of the Greeks" from the
> north, but it is now quite clear that the pottery style is a continuance that
> never appears father north than the Pelopenese.

This is a matter of controversy; Mallory described the Minyan ware as
being "incessantly discussed".  I don't know all the details regarding
that pottery style, but I'm pretty confident in stating that you're
misrepresenting the field if you say that it was "quite clear" that the
Minyan pottery represents a continuation of an earlier style.

I accept the view of Mallory and many others that the latest unity of PIE
was in the area of the Ukraine around 4000-3500 BCE.  If this is true,
then the "coming of the Greeks" must have occurred at some time between
3500 and 1500, at which point Linear B kicks in.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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