help archaeologists to test hypotheses regarding social and political change and regional interactions, to explain the distribution of intrusive archaeological assemblages and changes in settlement patterns, and to identify the linguistic structure and identity of ancient texts.

Archaeology and historical linguistics also intersect when written texts survive for or about the culture under study. Although written texts may provide a rich source of information, historical references can be vague, inaccurate, or culturally biased. Oftentimes hypotheses tested without them can be equally productive.

Historical Linguistics

Nineteenth-century European linguists working at the University of Leipzig, referred to as Neogrammarians by their elders, developed principles and a method of comparison that successfully accounted for linguistic change over time. They demonstrated that the linguistic processes that produced change in prehistoric languages are observable and operative in transforming living languages. They showed how most of the modern linguistic groups in Europe and some others in the Near East and India developed from a common ancestral language, Indo-European. Neogrammarians were able to reconstruct a basic vocabulary and associated cultural traits for a proto-language they called Proto-Indo-European and to propose a geographic homeland for the Indo-European people (Labov 1994).

Research in the past twenty-five years has demonstrated that the degree of regularity and the mechanical principles of the Neogrammarians are essentially correct. Refinements in typological classifications and linguistic geography and advances in sociolinguistic methods of data collection and quantitative analysis have all helped to illuminate some features of the past that previously remained unexplored and beyond explanation (ibid.).

Combining Archaeology and Language

European scholarship conceived the seminal theoretical and methodological models for archaeological, historical, and linguistic investigations that continue to be reworked, discarded, and rediscovered today. Europe has also provided the proving ground for interdisciplinary debates (Trigger 1989). In the early twentieth century, European archaeologists combined the reconstructions of historical linguists with their own empirical evidence to propose locations for an Indo-European homeland and to reconstruct the lifeway of Indo-Europeans (Mallory 1991).

As the number of excavated sites increased and the stratigraphic and geographic distributions of artifacts became clearer, disputes arose among archaeologists over the origins of specific European cultures. Fueled by nationalist and regional fervor of the early twentieth century, archaeologists like gustaf kossinna insisted upon a local origin for the succession of artifact types while Carl Schuchhart identified materials from different areas with separate ethnic groups whose migrations could be identified by their material remains (Mallory 1991). vere gordon childe favored continuous diffusion of cultural traditions from outside Europe (Renfrew 1987). The active role that interdisciplinary scholarship played in these debates lessened considerably after World War II as a result of the misuse of combined archaeological and linguistic findings by Nazi Germany to substantiate Nazi racial beliefs and to justify German territorial expansion (Mallory 1991).

The debate over independent local innovation versus cultural diffusion (see Childe’s theory above) has been ongoing in archaeology since the turn of the century, and similar debates have also set the course of research in linguistics. By the 1960s the importance of internal factors as the cause for change took precedence in some research over external factors (Trigger 1989). Those scholars whose results were partly based upon diffusion, migration, and interdisciplinary data found it necessary to argue their case on several fronts. Such a defense was necessary in 1987 after the publication of Collin Renfrew’s book, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. Scholarly response to Renfrew’s proposal linking the spread of agriculture into Europe with the arrival of Indo-Europeans raised both strong objections and support from other scholars and his use of linguistic data has made a