GREEK PREHISTORY AND IE (EVIDENCE?)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/27/00 2:55:47 PM, georg at rullet.leidenuniv.nl wrote:

<< But the renfrewian alternative, the "wave-of-advance-model" (which is very
interesting and should not be thrown out with the washwater, just because the
whole of the Renfrew theory meets with considerable difficulties; it is more
than likely that it may provide explanations for *some* dislocations of
people/cultures/languages in the Old World. Only which ones is the question),
this renfrewian alternative, though different in detail, *does* involve a
movement of concrete people in space and time, n'est-ce pas ?>>

Just what thoes considerable difficulties are is still something I am trying
to get at.  The wave of advance model of course is a slow migration model and
does not exclude language transfer the quicker way - someone close enough to
this matter said he was 'pretty darn sure' that Renfrew would not argue that
Turkish in Asia Minor was the result of a 4000 year wave.

He also reminded me that Renfrew's book was not "the Bible." I have to
remember that, as even Mallory points out, what Renfrew was after was a
start, despite the way his work is *sometimes* portrayed on this list.

Actually if you read A&L you can see that what Renfrew was first of all doing
was chastising archaeologists for accepting presumptive dates based on
linguistics - which he points out were often based on old archaeology.  (He
was in a particularly good position to do that because of his role in the
C-14 revolution.)

Where once linguistics had old archaeological data to hang its hat on - old
evidence of migrations, especially - that evidence had disappeared, but
archaeologists were still dating their findings as if it were still there -
and wondering why the C-14 dates were so early.  The migrations hadn't
happened yet!  So that even in the early 50's - before Linear B had been
worked out - some archaeologists were still dating anything presumed IE at
the old 1250BC date - and saying that there must be some problem over at the
Cambridge lab because the base brackets with C-14 had become + or - 1000
years.  The next backdate was 1600BC for the IE invasion.  And then that
wouldn't hold up.  It took a while to get the idea that the data might not
supply a migration date anytime during that period.

Some archaeologists think Renfrew should have never got involved in the
language/ethnic thing at all - the strict Brit archs refuse to talk about
language or ethnic affilations at all.  Others think it was a good thing to
cut the Gordian knot - even if it would take a little talk between linguists
and archaeologists to fix it and make things right again.

So let's see if we in some small way can start making it right again - what
considerable difficulties do you find in Renfrew's (not the Bible)
hypothesis?  "I think we got a can-do situation here" (- old US Marine
expression of optimism in somewhat difficult circumstances.)

Regards,
Steve Long