We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
In the past couple of years, we have witnessed how new techniques for the study of ancient biomolecules have disrupted the study of the human past and reshaped the research arena (Cappellini et al. 2018). Traditionally, only two lines of evidence have been available for human prehistory: that of prehistoric archaeology and that of historical linguistics. Now we are so fortunate as to witness these being supplemented with a third, entirely independent line of evidence, viz. palaeogenetics. The consequences of this addition can safely be called spectacular.
Corded Ware is one of the main archaeological phenomena of the third millennium before the common era (BCE), with a wide geographic spread across much of central and northeastern Europe, from Denmark, the Rhineland, and Switzerland in the west to the Baltic and Western Russia in the east, and broadly restricted to the temperate, continental zones north of the Alps, the Carpathians, and the steppe/forest steppe border to the east (Glob 1944; Strahm and Buchvaldek 1991; Furholt 2014).
We are currently experiencing what could be called the “third science revolution” (Kristiansen 2014). The implications of this revolution are reshaping not only archaeological discourse, but – even more fundamentally – the nature and perception of interdisciplinarity (Stutz 2018). The current reconfiguration offers unique new opportunities for collaboration across the sciences and humanities, as we will show, but can also provoke a strong emotional response. This is apparent from the at times fierce debates about the role of science in archaeological, archaeogenetic, and perhaps especially archaeolinguistic interpretation (Gray, Atkinson, & Greenhill 2011 vs. Pereltsvaig & Lewis 2015; Ion 2017 and 2019; Ribeiro 2019; Sørensen 2016). We also see old debates about the role of historical linguistics in archaeology resurfacing (Hansen 2019).
This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume explores the rise of the world's first pastoral nomads the Yamnaya Culture in the Russian Pontic steppe including their social organization, expansions, and the transition from nomadism to semi-sedentism when entering Europe. It also traces the chariot conquest in the late Bronze Age and its impact on the expansion of the Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia. In the final section, the volumes consider the development of hierarchical societies and the origins of slavery. A landmark synthesis of recent, exciting discoveries, the book also includes an extensive theoretical discussion regarding the integration of linguistics, genetics, and archaeology, and the importance of interdisciplinary research in the study of ancient migration.