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2	DISCIPLINES IN THE REC0N-STRUCTION OF PREHISTORY The reconstruction of prehistory is presently pursued via two major disciplines, archaeology and comparative linguistics. Although there have been numerous attempts to generate interdisciplinary results from their merger, the impact on the great majority of professionals has been slight. Human genetics has a way to go before it is really integrated into prehistory There is, moreover, another tool, comparative ethnography, largely unexplored since the 1930s, that has considerable power to shed light on aspects of the past that are quite inaccessible to these other disciplines. This presentation looks at the structure of thinking about prehistory today, the tools that comparative ethnography could provide and gives an example of its potential contribution.
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4	Further DISCIPLINES IN THE REC0NSTRUCTION OF PREHISTORY Apart from these, other types of new information are on the horizon Palaeoclimatology Palaeobiogeography Historical iconography Epigraphy and new decipherments
5	Feedback loops IN THE REC0NSTRUCTION OF PREHISTORY A view commonly expressed concerning the inter-relation of disciplines is that they should be pursued independently and only subsequently consulted to see if there is a match While to intellectual logic of this position is clear, it is not a realworld description of the way many researchers proceed Not only is there likely to be an iterative relation between the discovery of matches between disciplines but there is also what might be called ‘conceptual leakage’, the spread of models between disciplines
6	conceptual leakage This can be illustrated with a concept from linguistics Language phyla or subgroups are presently defined by the languages that are either synchronically spoken or are attested from epigraphy or historical sources. The Nilo-Saharan languages are one of the oldest language phyla of Africa and so are in retreat or encapsulated in many areas There are no epigraphic sources for the wider extension of the phylum Nonetheless, a ‘bundle’ of diverse evidence, from archaeology to iconography to contemporary material culture makes it highly likely that Nilo-Saharan once spread over a much greater geographical area If we therefore identify non-linguistic ‘bundles’ with language phyla expansions we can then borrow such interpretations to explain new archaeological data
7	Elements of the presentation The presentation will then focus on; Outlining the uses of synchronic comparative ethnography in constructing an integrated prehistory Presenting two examples of how this might work A) the Austronesian expansion B) Saharan prehistory
8	Ethnoarchaeology Ethnoarchaeology represents an attempt to infuse more interpretative life into prehistory, using contemporary ethnographic data to propose likely meanings for archaeological finds. Thus, if we find pots are decorated using certain techniques in the present using tools which may be perishable and thus invisible in the archaeological record, it is a reasonable assumption that similar tools could have been used in the past. But the important point about most ethnoarchaeology is that its fieldwork in the present is driven by archaeological questions, notably deriving from ceramics and metalworking and its use of ethnography is therefore highly selective.
9	Genetics Enter molecular biology. From the early 1990s, the development of modern techniques of DNA analysis constituted a major break with traditional biological anthropology; the introduction of molecular techniques in the early 1990s has largely revolutionised the study of human populations in Africa. DNA could potentially be recovered from archaeological material and analysis of DNA seemed to offer a way of relating present human populations both to one another and to past materials. The earliest work concentrated on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) but the analysis of nuclear or paternal DNA is now regarded as of equal significance. DNA offered new insights into the development of modern humans, but its claims have gone further in recent times, to encompass the interpretation of archaeological and linguistic data. Despite great hopes and even greater claims, there has been deep scepticism from other disciplines about genetics. To judge by some of its exponents, the links between language, demographic movement and genetics in prehistory are well-established.
10	Genetics II These were enthusiastically promoted at the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s as the ‘New Synthesis’ or ‘Archaeogenetics’. The opus magnus of this trend was the appearance of ‘The History and Geography of Human Genes’ (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), which essays a major revision of the methodology for exploring human history. Linguistic classifications of human populations purport to offer a tool for outflanking simple racial models; more abstract, they appear to provide an ideal analogue to the classificatory trees output from DNA analyses. If DNA phylogenies and language trees were to correspond, this would indeed be striking independent confirmation for models of human prehistory. Although this continues to play well in the pages of the journal Nature, most archaeologists and linguists remain deeply sceptical.
11	Comparative ethnography Comparative ethnography has been long ignored, for a variety of reasons. The diversity of societies across much of the world is complemented by the existence of a large number of elements of their culture which are similar across wide areas. These range from material culture to abstract ideas and symbols. They change and evolve from one group to another in ways that suggest; they may be of considerable antiquity they may be linked with linguistic groupings and known demographic movements that observed changes may reflect some general processes that can be identified
12	Comparative ethnography Such ideas are hardly new; indeed the organising principles of the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford were intended to demonstrate something of the kind. Pitt-Rivers used Polynesian war-clubs to illustrate the point and certainly island societies are ideal for showing gradual change without confounding areal influences. What is new is the potential for an interpretative framework, that can combine the insights of archaeology with the results of linguistics. Before considering how this might work, it is useful to backtrack and consider the practices of ethnographers early in the twentieth century, particularly those of the German-Swedish school.
13	Comparative ethnography When the main sources of information about exotic peoples were missionary reports and objects brought back to Europe by collectors of curiosities, it is unsurprising that material culture studies played a major role in interpreting world prehistory. The late nineteenth century was the century of colonial museums, and the period when most of the major ethnographic collections were accumulated. Although this occurred across the European/American world, the theoretical edifices erected on the basis of these collections were most highly developed in Germany. Although it is an intellectual commonplace to link these collections with the formation of colonial empires, in fact the most enthusiastic imperialists, Spain, England and France, never developed the rich intellectual superstructure that evolved in Germany, Sweden and to a lesser extent, the United States.
14	Comparative ethnography The founders of the disciplines, such as Adolf Bastian and Bernard Ankermann, thought that culture could be divided into discrete traits and these could be mapped, a process which would reveal ‘cultural layers’. Such layers had an evolutionary subtext, in that there were ‘primitive’ layers and more evolved ones and these were reflected in the complexity of material culture. To do these scholars justice, such labels were sparingly applied and the concern was more to uncover a rich archaeology of layers. It was believed that material culture, religious beliefs and social organisation were associated in complexes and that detailed analysis would allow a more complete characterisation of such complexes.
15	Comparative ethnography Musical instruments played a considerable role in these early analyses partly because the morphology of sound-producers is very distinctive and partly because there seemed to be a link between formal complexity and ‘high civilisation’ (we have pianos, hunter-gatherers have rattles). The enterprise was global but Africa played a major role in the German imagination and many major scholars worked on African material culture. Frobenius, for example, conceived an Atlas Africanus which would map African material culture in great detail and some folios of this were published, but much more was collected and today it lies unused in the archives of the Institute that bears his name in Frankfurt.
16	Comparative ethnography The German enterprise had two major offspring, the Swedish ethnologists and the students of American material culture. Both were astonishingly energetic in collating information and publishing monographs on material culture, both in regional, ethnic and single-item studies. Sture Lagercrantz, who died only in November 2001, began publishing distributional studies in the 1920s, and the journal Ethnos became the home of this type of publication as well as the monographs of Studia Ethnographica Uppsaliensis. In America, this type of data collection is associated with Franz Boas, but the Field Museum in Chicago was probably mostly active in publishing studies of material culture, especially Wilfred Hambly. Swedish and American scholars were much less clear about the intellectual yield of these studies, and Lagercrantz in particular seemed quite content to publish maps and discussions of sources with no further conclusions are regards history or social and economic significance, let alone links to linguistics or archaeology.
17	Comparative ethnography This literature has been largely forgotten; few students of prehistory make use of it. How has this occurred? When the new breed of social anthropologists developed, principally under the influence of Malinowski at the London School of Economics, one of their principal concerns was to discount previous types of scholarship. They took an easy target, the Egyptological speculations of Elliott Smith and William Perry, labelled these ‘diffusionism’ and took these were frivolous speculations and most likely false. No effort was made to actually disprove the findings of earlier scholars; they were simply declared irrelevant to the business at hand. It is hard not to see a link with the colonial enterprise in this sea-change; the goal had changed from making sense of exotica sent back by missionaries to developing practical understanding of ‘native peoples’ in order that they be governed more effectively.
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28	What were the problems? In case this presentation appears to be unduly positive, in the light of modern scholarship there are also many problems with the German-Swedish school Ironically, most of these are not the problems social anthropologists charged them with The most curious one is that most of these authors were not interested in archaeology, except in so much as there were occasional records of material culture items they were studying Even more strangely, they were not interested in linguistics and make almost nothing of the sometimes evident connections with linguistic families They seem to have been blinded by the ‘cultural’ layer ideology
29	What were the problems? The other side (and this is the one that makes people uneasy) is that the hypotheses were of ‘cultural layers’ and ‘culture strata’ and that these were implicitly or otherwise linked to ideas of cultural evolution, that more ‘evolved’ societies were higher up the tree, as it were Ironically, this type of discourse is exactly similar to the World Bank, and numerous other international development agencies. ‘Developed’ countries with their economic hegemony and politically correct value-systems are the ideal ‘developing’ countries should aspire to. In many ways, Ankermann, Frobenius et al. took a much more positive view of Africa than these insufferably smug developers.
30	A new generation of material culture studies Since ca. 2000 a new type of material culture studies has begun to surface in a variety of journals, often statistics driven and very much related to the quantitative methods used in genetics. The value of this material can be debated, but a crucial assumption of the methods is the availability of historical documentation. To study, say, the evolution of European brass instruments over time with any sort of quantitative strategy requires both that historical records exist and that a pre-existing scholarly industry has undertaken to describe them These conditions are not met and never will be met for most of the material under discussion here. Indeed the Kulturkreislehre school was premised on working in areas where historical documents are absent
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36	Is Austronesian a valid concept beyond linguistics? Austronesian undoubtedly begins with Dempwolff in the 1930s as a linguistic concept, although his Austronesisch is what today would be called Malayo-Polynesian or extra-Formosan. It was probably first picked up as an archaeological concept by Peter Bellwood in the 1970s and has developed rich associations in different disciplines since then. Which is not to say detractors do not exist; Solheim, Meacham and Terrell being major names. However, it seems to supporters that they simply do not engage with the non-archaeological evidence
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45	AustronesianS in Africa Madagascar East African coast West Africa?
46	AustronesianS in madagascar Malagasy language closely related to Barito languages of Borneo However, many areas of vocabulary seem to be borrowed from Malay, in particular, sailing terminology Bob Blust has recently shown that the languages of the Bajau Laut, the sea nomads, form part of the Barito group Pallesen argues the Bajau Laut split up following the expansion of the Srivijaya Malay in the 7^th century. If so, this would fit well with the archaeological evidence, which has the first settlement of Madagascar about this time The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first century seaman’s guide to the East Africa coast, suggests Graeco-Roman mariners or their contacts had some knowledge of Madagascar, perhaps making an appearance in the text as the ‘Great island of Menouthias’, a source for tortoise-shell.
47	AustronesianS in EAST AFRICA I However, this does not entirely explain a great deal of significant cultural evidence for Austronesian presence on the East African coast, some of it well before the settlement of Madagascar proper Pliny refers to the ‘men who come across the great ocean on rafts [rati]’ in contrast to the coastal traders. These could well be Austronesians, if rati is an outrigger canoe These Austronesians were almost certainly unconnected with those who settled Madagascar and probably came from somewhere in the Philippines; however, linguistic evidence is slight
48	AustronesianS in EAST AFRICA II Some of the evidence for this exchange is the transfer of elephantiasis to Africa and the import of African malaria, the import of SE Asian fighting cocks and bananas, huti, to the East African coast, and a type of goat (?) to island SE Asia Is there any direct archaeological evidence? Not yet. But neither was there for the Graeco-Roman trade until a couple of years ago, despite the documentary evidence. Postulating two (or three counting later Malay trade contacts) distinct Austronesian contacts with the EA coast solves many problems related to try and roll all the evidence into one package.
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50	AustronesianS in the persian gulf Evidence for this is so far entirely textual Balâdurî (9^th c,) et al-Tabarî mention the Sayâbiga [=Sumatrans] in the Gulf prior to Islam and they were apparently enrolled as mercenaries, forming a garrison at Bahrein in the reign of Calif Abû Bakr (632-634) as well as becoming guardians of the treasury at Basra and taking part in naval expeditions against India in AD 775.
51	Austronesians in the New World California South America
52	Austronesians in California Recent evidence (published in American Antiquity, 2003) suggests that there was contact between the Chumash Indians and Polynesians in Southern California between 400 and 800 A.D. This is based on the unique design of their boats, sewn plank canoes, rather than dugouts used elsewhere along the coast and perhaps more strikingly, typically Polynesian compound fish-hooks Chumash is essentially dead as a language but work continues
53	Chumash plank canoe
54	Austronesians in South America Polynesian contact with South America has long been the subject of speculation (Heyerdahl etc.) but model was confused, having Amerindians voyaging in the Pacific, despite their known lack of ocean-going craft Probably the crack in scholarly scepticism was the clear evidence that the sweet potato reached Eastern Polynesian, under its Peruvian name, kumara, in pre-Spanish time. Since then, a considerable amount of other evidence has turned up, notably in human genetics where the presence of the 9 base pair deletion on the West Coast of South America points to Polynesian presence
55	Austronesians in South America Another curious, but convincing piece of evidence is the ‘blue-egg’ chicken, a variety of fowl encountered by the first explorers in this region. This is likely to be a descendant of the Polynesian chicken. And you can buy its eggs in Sainsbury’s supermarket.. So some of Heyerdahl’s evidence may not be completely wrong, despite his interpretation
56	Austronesians go global
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58	New directions: palaeoclimatology Recent large-scale modeling of arid zones is making possible a new vision of ‘corridors’ of dispersal And possible links with material culture, languages and genetics
59	Saharan Holocene palaeo-rivers and lakes
60	Saharan palaeo-rivers and bone harpoon points
61	Saharan palaeohydrogeography and Nilo-Saharan languages
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64	New developments in decipherment
65	Where now? A possible future configuration for reconstructing prehistory can be imagined. The primary requirement is that disciplinary specialists move away from their training and re-orient themselves towards their goal. In other words, rather than ‘doing’ archaeology or linguistics, the goal should be to reconstruct the past with whatever tools are to hand. This is often difficult, given the structure of university careers and the system of academic rewards, but the potential is considerable.
66	Where now? The availability of computers, GIS systems and rapid access to on-line catalogues has made the time necessary to compile this type of material much shorter If the intellectual will were present, then much of this older material could be digitised and linked to archaeological and linguistic databases. This would require that anthropologists and others see the point and this is rather unlikely. Anthropologists seem to be increasing embarrassed by museum collections and act to distance themselves from these ‘colonial’ acquisitions.
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