Something on methods II
qWithin the Anglo-American tradition
such studies began to
die during the 1930s, and part of the reason was that no effective explanatory models
underlay these vast assemblages
of data.
qBut from the 1990s, the alliance of
archaeology, genetics and
linguistics has provided just such a frame. If Austronesian or Indo-European or
Uto-Aztecan can be modelled
as a historical expansion of people and culture as well as language then the
distribution of material culture can be correlated with these other
elements.
qIt is important not to confuse this
with conventional diffusionism,
which is typically concerned with ‘high-culture’ elements that are most likely to have
spread (or not)
well after the establishment of the major language phyla. The argument is that there
are certain items of material
culture of sufficient antiquity that they were carried, literally, by the movement
of speakers as the phylum
evolved.