Vol. 3, n. 2: Linguistics, archaeology, and the histories of language spread: the case of the Southern J=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=EA_?=languages (Souza 2011)

[Cadernos de Etnolingüística]

Linguistics, archaeology, and the histories of language spread: the
case of the Southern Jê languages, Brazil

by Jonas Gregorio de Souza (MAE/USP)

In this paper I discuss the relationship between archaeology and
historical linguistics, and present a case study from my own research
on the diffusion of the Southern Jê languages. For a long time,
archaeologists were not aware of the fact that the Kaingang and
Xokleng languages were related to the Jê languages of Central Brazil,
and proposed an autochthonous origin for those southern groups. A new
generation of archaeologists, aware of the relationship between
Kaingang and Xokleng and the Jê language family, focused on the
identification of their migration. The emergence of the so called
Taquara-Itararé archaeological tradition around AD 220 was thought to
signal the arrival of Jê speakers to the south. In my research I
analyzed assemblages of Taquara-Itararé pottery from different areas
of Southern Brazil, combined with the available radio-carbon dates,
and with the most recent data on subsistence. The chronological and
cultural frame resulting from these data corroborates previous
hypotheses that the appearance of pottery coincides with a process of
population growth fostered by intensive Araucaria pine nut
exploitation and maize-tuber agriculture, which rapidly led to the
filling up of the landscape by these new settlers and to territorial
circumscription—the formation of more restricted and territorial
social boundaries, sensu Carneiro (1970). Such circumscription is best
evidenced by the development of local pottery styles, as I could
identify. This economic and demographic process is in agreement with
the “wave of advance” model for linguistic change: a population,
bringing a new subsistence technology, grows to the point of
displacing the previous inhabitants of a region. On the other hand,
the yet few known cases of local adoption of agriculture and pottery
by pre-existing inhabitants of Southern Brazil can be explained by
evoking social and ideological factors possibly linked to the spread
of a ritual complex typical of Jê societies, manifest in the
construction of ceremonial centers with earthworks and burial mounds.
This is in agreement with the “recruitment” model, according to which
a language perceived as more prestigious spreads through language
shift together with certain social and ideological features of its
speakers. To explain the separation between the Southern and
Northern/Central branches of the Jê family, similar archaeological
studies and syntheses must be conducted in Central Brazil.

http://www.etnolinguistica.org/issue:vol3n2

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