seeking recommendation for articles evaluating linguistic contacts

[Harriet J. Ottenheimer]

Hi all.

I hope everyone's summer is going well.

A colleague of mine at Kansas State University has asked me the 
following question:

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[quote]  ". . . In my Archaeological Fact or Fiction class, we discuss 
various claims of migration and diffusion, many over long distances.  
For example, the claimed transatlantic crossing of Africans to Central 
America, where these "advanced" Africans were claimed to have influenced 
the development of the Olmec civilization.  In evaluating these claims, 
we often look mostly at the archaeological record.

    However, many of these claims try to use linguistics, or, more 
specifically, word similarities to support their claim.  Not being well 
versed in linguistics, I often am unable to explain very well the 
problems of making comparisons based only on word similarities.  I am 
already familiar with some discussion of this topic for the claimed 
Africa-Central America connection, but I wonder if you might by chance 
be familiar with other discussions of problems with similar arguments.

    The most recent controversial claim is that ancient Polynesians 
sailed to southern California. The claimed evidence is the similarity 
between sewn-plank boats found in both places, but also similarities in 
Polynesian and Chumash words, especially related to these boats. In 
order to guide students to look not only at archaeological evidence 
critically, but also linguistic evidence, I wonder if you might know of 
any resources that would be useful in evaluating arguments of contact 
between peoples that are based on linguistic similarities? . . ."  [end 
quote]

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My colleague is already aware of at least one critique of the 
African-Olmec connection that includes some discussion of the linguistic 
argument.  Does anyone know of a good article which critiques the 
linguistic assumptions made concerning the Polynesian-California connection?

Also: does anyone know of a good *general* article which explains how to 
evaluate and critique the arguments for contact based on linguistic 
evidence? 

My colleague is looking, in particular, for a good article (one which is 
neither too long nor too technical) that she can use with a class of 
undergraduates, most of whom have little or no background in linguistics 
or linguistic anthro.  

An article which discusses the folly of making claims for contact based 
on only one or two supposedly "similar" words would be ideal.  Or an 
article which shows students that apparently similar words may actually 
function quite differently in different grammatical and cultural 
contexts, and therefore might not be reliable linguistic indicators of 
ancient contacts.

I would appreciate it if anyone can recommend any good readings.

You can write either directly to her (Lauren Ritterbush 
<lritterb at ksu.edu>), or to me and I will forward to her.  (I am cc'ing 
this message to her.)

Many thanks.

Harriet Ottenheimer
Professor of Anthropology and American Ethnic Studies
Kansas State University