Using place-names to build absolute chronologies for language
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-11-08

While linguistic methodologies can analyse complex relationships between languages and can establish relative chronologies, it has proven difficult and controversial to establish absolute chronologies. The development and dispersal of the Indo European languages are variously attributed to the Upper Palaeolithic, the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, the last of which is currently most favoured by linguists.
Through the study of place-names in relation to environmental change and archaeology, it is suggested in this paper that we can suggest absolute time-frames. The methodology adopted in this study is to analyse landscapes in eastern Britain that are known to have changed significantly between the prehistoric and the medieval periods.
The majority of place-names in the English landscape are made of elements of “Old English”, the name we give to the language spoken in parts of Britain between the end of the Roman period (conventionally 410AD) and the Norman Conquest (1066AD). If groups of Old English place-names indicate a landscape that prevailed in prehistory, then this would suggest that a Germanic language, an ancestor to English was being spoken. Key landscape features that change in the Holocene are large bodies of water (“meres” in Old English) and islands (“ey” in Old English). Analysis of evidence from landscape and environmental archaeology demonstrates that some meres had dried out by the Roman period, yet the surrounding English place-names describe their extent in the prehistoric period.
While the arrival in Britain of a Germanic language can be established from this research as having taken place no later than the second millennium BC, it is not yet possible to determine the period more precisely. It is hoped that the other papers and discussion in this session might throw some light on the most likely chronology.

Author: Mr Scutt, Win - English Heritage (Presenting author)