The Indo-European Dark Ages Illuminated
By analysing the reconstructed cultural vocabulary of prehistoric language stages through the lens of phylogenetics, the project illuminates the oldest stages of the Indo-European language family.
The project reconstructs the cultural vocabulary – words referring to technologies (e.g. the wheel) and socioeconomic phenomena (e.g. dowry) – of the IE “Dark Ages”, the period from the dissolution of Proto-Indo-European around 4000 BCE to the emergence of written evidence of the individual daughter languages.
The project builds a database of cultural vocabulary in the proto-languages of all main branches of the Indo-European language family: Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Greek etc. Applying a phylogenetic approach to linguistic reconstruction, the database is then used to reconstruct the vocabulary of even earlier stages of the Indo-European language family, giving a detailed picture of the cultural evolution of the speakers all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, dated to around 4000 BCE.
Main research question
Which technological and socioeconomic stages and transitions can we infer from the reconstructed vocabulary for archaeologically identifiable concepts in the reconstructed stages of the IE language family?
Subquestions
- From material culture to linguistic content: Which concepts identifiable through material culture may correspond to linguistic content?
- From linguistic content to form: Which linguistic forms expressing this content can be reconstructed in the individual IE branches?
- From form to distribution: Under a phylogenetic approach, which linguistic forms can be reconstructed for each of the internal nodes of the IE family tree?
Spring 2027: Workshop (still in planning phase) (South Campus, University of Copenhagen).
The Dark Ages project has an international advisory board consisting of the following researchers:
- Professor Gerd Carling, Goethe University Frankfurt
- Associate professor Rune Iversen, University of Copenhagen
- Professor Guus Kroonen, Leiden University and University of Copenhagen
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bagge, Christine Flygenring | PhD Fellow | ||
| Olander, Thomas | Professor | +4535335937 | |
| Poulsen, Simon | Postdoc | +4535325353 | |
| Thorsø, Rasmus | Teaching Assistant |
| Henriksen, Nicolas Gall | Student assistant |