Call for abstracts, ALT-adjacent Workshop on Language Diversity and Prehistory, extended deadline

[Søren Wichmann]

Date for workshop: 19-Aug-2013
Venue: MPI-EVA, Leipzig, Germany
Contact Person: Søren Wichmann (wichmann at eva.mpg.de)
Web Site: 
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/2013_language_diversity_and_prehistory/index.html 


Workshop on Language Diversity and Prehistory

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss how the use of linguistic 
data may shed light on prehistory and to continue a still relatively new 
dialogue with genetics and archaeology. A central concern is to avoid 
fitting findings from one discipline to that of another and then 
concluding, circularly, that a given scenario is supported by two 
different disciplines. Instead, we need to evaluate evidence ‘from 
inside’ each discipline, and when we try to compare results we should 
not only look out for matching results but also expect and try to 
understand discrepancies. The invited speakers not only include 
interdisciplinarily oriented linguists (Mark Donohue, Johanna Nichols), 
but also an archaeologist (Alex Geurds) and a geneticist (Chiara Barbieri).

The workshop is organized under the auspices of the ERC project ‘The 
Linguistic Past of Mesoamerica and the Andes: A Search for Early 
Migratory Relations between North and South America’, and some of the 
invited talks will address the prehistory of the Americas. Nevertheless, 
discussions do not have to focus on this particular geographical area.

Call for Papers:

We welcome submissions of abstracts (around 1/2 page, single-spaced, 12 
pt) on the general topic of the workshop.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 14, 2013
Notification of acceptance abstracts: May 17, 2013