Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration

6. Using Cognitive Semantics to Relate Mesa Verde Archaeology to Modern Pueblo Languages

6 Using Cognitive Semantics to Relate Mesa Verde Archaeology to Modern Pueblo Languages Scott G. Ortman In this chapter I develop a new approach to integrating archaeology and language in the study of ancient migrations. The very existence of language families implies that the movement of speech communities has been a common feature of human history, even if such movements are rare today. Rouse (1986:175–180) recognized this in distinguishing population movements— which involve the colonization of a previously uninhabited area or the absorption /displacement of indigenous people by newcomers—from immigration —which involves an intrusion of individuals or small groups into an already-populated area. My approach focuses on cases in which the presentday speakers of a language live in a different area than past speakers, and in this sense it focuses on archaeolinguistic traces of past population movements. The approach I develop here focuses on a cognitive process called conceptual metaphor, which is a common denominator of material culture and language. Previous studies have shown that the conceptual metaphors of ancestral speech communities are embedded in the documented languages of their descendants. Recent archaeological research shows that these metaphors are also expressed in archaeological material culture. Based on these findings I suggest it is possible to relate archaeological complexes to protolanguages by correlating conceptual systems as they are expressed in the archaeological record and in potentially related languages. I will first review current methods for relating archaeology and language and discuss their strengths and weaknesses . Then I will introduce conceptual metaphor as an additional basis for linking archaeology and language, show how one can reconstruct protometaphors from linguistic and archaeological evidence, and apply these methods in a case study that traces the migration of a specific speech community from its homeland in the Mesa Verde region of the U.S. Southwest. 112 Scott G. Ortman Background The essays in this and other recent edited volumes (e.g., Blench and Spriggs 1997, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; Bellwood and Renfrew 2003; Madsen and Rhode 1994) illustrate that there is widespread interest in the integration of archaeology and language. My own interest in bringing these fields together stems from an awareness of the quantum leap in understanding that typically follows decipherment of ancient scripts. One only need compare Thompson’s Maya History and Religion (1970) with Friedel, Schele, and Parker’s Maya Cosmos (1993) to appreciate the revolution in understanding that occurs once the language spoken in archaeological sites is known. It is obvious that if we can agree on the language or languages spoken at archaeological sites, we can obtain a much deeper understanding of the culture that created these sites by integrating the precise spatial, chronological, and behavioral data of archaeology with the rich conceptual data embedded in language. The benefits of such integration have yet to be widely felt for nonliterate societies because for such societies our only option is to relate archaeological complexes to protolanguages reconstructed using the comparative method. Kirch and Green (2001) provide an exemplary study of this process for Polynesia , but the case they examine is relatively straightforward because all Polynesian languages are genetically related and most islands are still inhabited by descendants of their original colonizers. Most other regions of the world have experienced longer and more complex histories of human occupation that involve migration, admixture, ethnogenesis, and language shift in addition to demic expansion and phylogenesis (Moore 1994, 2001). In these more complex situations it is not safe to assume that ancestral forms of present-day languages were spoken in the archaeological sites of a region or that the language of these sites was ancestral to any documented language. Although Kirch and Green show that it is possible to integrate archaeological and linguistic prehistory, current methods for doing so do not always provide clear or definitive answers, as debates over the Numic expansion (Fowler, this volume; Madsen and Rhode 1994), the proto–Indo European homeland (Anthony 2007; Mallory 1989, 1997; Renfrew 1987), and the language of Teotihuacan (Dakin and Wichmann 2000; Kaufman and Justeson 2007) attest. Nevertheless, there is too much to be gained from successful integration for us to ignore the challenge. Relating Mesa Verde Archaeology to Modern Pueblo Languages 113 Existing Methods for Correlating Archaeology and Language In the recent archaeolinguistic literature a variety of methods are used to relate protolanguages to archaeological complexes. Each of these methods can produce plausible correlations, but in many cases there are...