PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND
INSTITUTIONS: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL
APPROACH
Kristian Kristiansen
University of Göteberg
The problem and its solution
The problem of the origin and spread of Indo-European (IE)
languages during the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) phase has now defied a
generally agreed historical explanation for more than 100 years.
Although there have been periods of some consensus, they were soon
followed by periods of refusal and new interpretations. It raises a more
fundamental question as to the theoretical and methodological
relationship between archaeology and historical linguistics. I outline the
problems in brief (§§1-3), and then propose a solution (§§4-6).1
This
will be followed by an analysis of the relationship between archaeology
and language in south Scandinavia during later prehistory. The results
and their implications will be discussed in the conclusion.
§1. The first observation I wish to make is that historical linguistics
have provided a relative historical framework for Indo-European and
Proto-Indo-European languages that is only historically anchored for its
later periods where written sources exist in historically or
archaeologically datable contexts. They have further provided a
typological framework that will probably not be dramatically altered in
the future, if no new texts unexpectedly appear, such as Tocharian
(Lehman 1992 and discussion in 1993:260ff.). Such new evidence is
most likely to appear in connection with archaeological excavations for
1
For a full up-to date review of Proto-Indo- European language and culture, see Mallory
and Adams (2006), for a new impressive archaeological synthesis on the origin and early
spread of PIE languages, see Anthony (2007a).
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions112
the earlier periods. A problem for the historical reconstruction of PIE is
the temporal unbalance of written evidence between Western Europe
(Germanic, Celtic, Italic, etc.) and Asia (Hittite, Greek, Indo-Aryan,
Iranian, etc.). The western IE languages are attested much later than the
eastern (1000 years or more), and therefore their earliest history within
IE are not on equal footing (Mallory 1996, fig. 2). What is termed PIE
for the western branches is a later version of that reconstructed language
than for the eastern branches. Therefore, they may have run through
several processes of extinction, divergence, and convergence during their
earlier, undocumented history. This led Mallory and Adams to propose
that
the difference in chronology between the European languages and
those of the Aegean-Anatolia and Asia may be an illusion fostered
by the lateness of our written sources for most of Europe, e.g.
linguistics have a tendency to place proto-languages cautiously about
500 to 1000 years before first attestation, and hence the later the
earliest written evidence, the more recent the estimated time depth
(Mallory and Adams 2006:104).
§2. The second observation is, that a truly, contextualized historical
explanation of PIE languages cannot be provided by linguistic methods
alone. The method of glottochronology may provide a yardstick of time,
but so many conditions have an influence on the speed of language
change that we have to rule it out as a reliable method for tracing the
time depth of language change and separation (Renfrew, McMahon, and
Trask 2000). Influence in the form of loanwords from neighboring
languages provides other historical links and dating, and they may also
be helpful in locating the Proto-Indo-European homeland (Haarman
1996).2
However, an interdisciplinary approach is needed to
contextualize and localize early language changes historically. Here
archaeology provides the only method beyond the time frame of written
sources, by Mallory aptly termed the “Dark Age” of IE languages
2
Early contacts between PIE and Uralic languages would seem to anchor a homeland in
the Pontic steppe. “If the Proto-Indo-Europeans established contacts at that time with the
Uralians in the north and the Caucasians in the south, then their homeland can be located
neither in the Transcaucasia, that is south of the Caucasus, nor in Anatolia. The reality of
early contacts between Proto-Indo-Europeans and Uralians is irreconcilable with any
assumption of an Indo-European homeland in Asia” (Haarman 1996:9; also Carpelan,
Parpola, and Koskikallio 2007).
Kristian Kristiansen 113
(Mallory 1996:12ff.). So far it has provided no conclusive answers
(recent discussions in Anthony 1995; Mallory 1998; Renfrew 1999;
Kristiansen 2005; and Anthony 2007a for a new convincing synthesis for
the steppe region, but excluding western and northern Europe).
§3. Archaeological interpretations of language groups in material
culture are complex, and cannot be reduced to a single parameter of
correspondence. Some form of correspondence exist between language
and material culture as a symbolic form of communication, but it needs
careful analysis and interpretation and so far this is a neglected field of
study (Hall 1997; Mallory 2002b; and Anthony 2007a:ch. 6). In addition
there are too many choices among archaeological cultures in Europe to
delimit those that correspond to a certain stage of language spread or
change. Finally, the mechanisms of cultural and language change in the
form of trade/exchange, travels, and population movements were
theoretically underdeveloped fields of interpretation in archaeology until
recently (Anthony 1997; Burmeister 2000; Chapman and Hamerow
1997; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, ch. 1 and 2). More recently it has
been proposed that technological clusters of complex knowledge, as well
as institutions with well-defined material correlates, provide testable
correspondences between archaeology and language (Barber 1989;
Kristiansen 2005).
In conclusion: only archaeology can provide the answer to questions
about the historical context and dating of PIE and the later divergence of
IE languages, but there are problems of identification. A partial solution
can be proposed:
§4. There exist in Europe a few remote “end regions” with only few
breaks in cultural continuity due to immigrations and/or social
transformation. As social change and language change go hand in hand
such transformations define the historical moments of language change.
Two such regions are South Scandinavia and Ireland. In South
Scandinavia there are two major and rather sudden cultural and social
transformations in later prehistory: the beginning of agriculture in the
earlier 4th millennium BC (the TRB Culture), and the arrival in Jutland
of the Single Grave Culture (SGC) in the beginning of the 3rd
millennium BC. Both intrude cultural and economic discontinuity and a
new social order. Especially the later might well correspond to a major
migration and language change, which later spread to eastern Denmark
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions114
and Norway (Kristiansen 1989; Prescott and Walderhauge 1995). Coastal
maritime cultures in Central Scandinavia linked to the northern forest
zone of Russia and Siberia also expanded westwards, but they belonged
to a different DNA stock than the TRB and Battle Axe culture
(Linderholm 2008). Only from the late 3rd millennium did these diverse
regional differences in material culture integrate into a common
archaeological culture with the beginning of mass production and
distribution of flint daggers and later metal. It represents the first possible
appearance of a shared (Nordic) language in south Scandinavia, based
upon new forms of travels/sea journeys (Kristiansen 2004; Østmo 2005),
and new forms of production and distribution of prestige goods that
speeded up regional interaction tremendously. This time sequence will
therefore be analysed in some detail in the next section.
§5. We will never know what language Neolithic pots spoke, and
consequently we will never be able safely to identify and date ProtoIndo-European
languages on archaeological grounds alone. Instead we
need to employ textual evidence on social and religious institutions in IE
speaking societies whose attributes can be identified empirically in the
archaeological record. New institutions are evidence of fundamental
changes in social organization that may also include language. This
interpretative strategy has been applied recently for the Bronze Age
(Kristiansen and Larsson 2005). The evidence shows that a number of
so-called Proto-Indo-European or rather mature Proto-Indo-European
institutions can be archaeologically dated in the 2nd millennium BC,
some with possible antecedents in the 3rd millennium BC. This new
evidence makes Colin Renfrew’s model of language, farming dispersal
look increasingly implausible (Kristiansen 2005), but more importantly it
introduces a new interdisciplinary methodology for establishing
correspondences between textual and archaeological evidence.
§6. Models of language change and social change need to be further
developed, in order to create an interdisciplinary field of theoretical
model building between historical linguists, archaeologists, and social
anthropologists. One good example is John Robb’s recent work (Robb
1993), or that of Mallory (2002a and 2002b). Another useful type of
modelling is the comparative historical analysis of language spread in
similar environments, as represented by Johanna Nichols work (Nichols
1998). It suggests that IE language spread was only the first example of a
Kristian Kristiansen 115
recurring historical scenario in western Eurasia. Finally, we need model
building on the relationship between material culture, ethnicity, and
language based on comparative case studies (Anthony 2007a; Brather
2004; Clarke 1968, ch.9; Fernández-Götz 2008; Hall 1997 and 2002;
Hedeager 2003; Jones 1997; Kristiansen 1998, fig. 221). These studies
suggest that certain forms of widely shared ethnic identities are linked to
a selective “package” of material culture that is symbolically charged
with cosmological meaning. Material culture thus forms a variety of
distributions, some overlapping some not, but each distribution with its
own reference to historical conditions from local to global.
Archaeology and language: South Scandinavia 3000 BC to 1000 AD.
In the following I shall illustrate and discuss the formation of
institutional and symbolic/cosmological identities in material culture and
their possible relationship with language. I choose south Scandinavia as a
suitable region for two reasons: it represent a northern “terminal region”
to Europe that was not subject to frequent changes and discontinuities as
was Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Secondly, we can trace the
formation and the continuity of stable cultural borders in material culture
towards the south. It resembles David Anthony’s findings on the Russian
steppe of a cultural border during more than thousand years between
Tripolje farmers and early Yamna pastoral farmers and herders (Anthony
2007b). The main difference between the Pontic region and Scandinavia
is that the very same cultural borders display continuity right into early
historical time, when we can demonstrate the existence of a Norse or
North Germanic language. Although some discontinuities can be
observed when new cultural and social influences penetrate south
Scandinavia from the south, the very same cultural borders keep
reappearing when social and cultural consolidation takes over. From this
we may deduce that there existed an ethnic and/or language border
between south Scandinavia and northern Europe that is rooted in later
prehistory, as it shows continuity during several thousand years. I apply a
definition of ethnic identity that assumes a shared cosmology of cultural
origins, which can be demonstrated in a specific and shared symbolic
language (Jones 1997; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, ch. 6).
Assumptions and hypotheses
The following assumptions, based upon recurring observations in the
archaeological record of the later prehistory in Europe, for later periods
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions116
under historical control, are used to identify social transformations and
migrations, and the relationship between language and material culture.
• A strong relationship exists between burial ritual, social, and
religious institutions, because a burial is the institutionalized
occasion for the transmission of property and power (Oestigaard
and Goldhahn 2006). Therefore a radical change in burial rites
signals a similar change in beliefs and institutions. If such a
change occurs rapidly, without transition it signals a
transformation of society often under strong external influence,
eventually a migration (to be supported also by settlement
change and economic change). This does not rule out the effects
of internal contradictions, which, however, often go hand in hand
with external forces of change.
• An entangled relationship exists between language, ethnic
identity, and material culture as forms of communication. The
relationship is complex, and needs to be spelled out in concrete
cases (Jones 1997; Hall 1997; Fernández Götz 2008). When a
package of material culture defines a shared symbolic identity
that is linked to basic social and religious institutions
(cosmology and general forms of ethnic identity) it presupposes
frequent social interaction and a shared language for its
continued reproduction. Several forms of ethnicity/identity may
co-exist, like local dialects and “national” languages.
• The reproduction of a social and cultural tradition in material
culture may create sharply defined borders against other social
and cultural traditions, as demonstrated by Ian Hodder in
ethnographic case studies (Hodder 1982). When such cultural
boundaries can be documented over longer periods of time, and
if they reappear after shorter breaks in cultural and social
continuity, it represents most probably also a language boundary.
In conditions of no major migrations language is thus one of the
most stable cultural phenomena, followed by cosmology and
ethnicity.
In the following I apply these assumptions as heuristic tools in a
reinterpretations of cultural traditions in south Scandinavia from 3000
BC to 1000 AD. They are to be regarded as preliminary and rather
Kristian Kristiansen 117
general approximations/hypotheses that should be modified and specified
by future research.
The expansion of the Single Grave Culture in Jutland and the Danish
Isles 2850-2350 BC and the co-existence of different cultural and social
traditions.3
In the decades around 2850 BC large tracts of formerly unsettled
forested territories of the central and western peninsula of Jutland were
settled by groups of immigrating colonizers. Within two to three
generations they burned down forests on a grand scale and created open
steppe like grass- and heath land intersected with tracts of woodland
outside the settled areas (Figure 1). In pollen diagrams it appears as the
most rapid and massive deforestation in the later prehistory of Denmark
(Figure 1). The rather open virgin forest cover and the light sandy soils,
which meant that heath land immediately began to form, facilitated this
economic strategy. On more fertile soils grasslands dominated, as in Thy
(Andersen 1995 and 1998, here summarized in Figure 1), whereas in
western Jutland heath land was created (Odgård 1994, fig. 121, the
diagram from lake Solsø). Such a rapid and complete deforestation over
huge territories of western Jutland could only be carried out by large
groups of incoming people. Existing TRB settlements could not have
3
We have recently witnessed an upsurge of research on the Danish Single Grave Culture
after a stand still of 50-60 years. Two major monographs have appeared within the last
year, one on the East Danish Single Grave Culture by Claus Ebbesen (Ebbesen 2006),
and a three volume monograph by Eva Hübner on the Jutlandic Single Grave Culture
(Hübner 2006). Both works entail richly illustrated catalogues of finds that will enable
other researchers to reanalyze the material and present new interpretations. Ebbesen’s
work is a 20 year old manuscript that is somewhat outdated on interpretation, whereas
Hübner carries out a most detailed analysis and interpretation of the formation and
expansion of the Single Grave Culture in Jutland. Also the classic works of Glob (1944)
and Struve (1953) are still fundamental. We have also had an up-to-date analysis of the
Bell Beaker phenomenon in Denmark (Sarauw 2007 and 2008; Prieto-Martinez 2008). In
addition we now have modern, well-dated pollen diagrams that makes it possible to
reconstruct the vegetation history (Odgård 1994; Andersen 1996 and 1998; Berglund
2006 for a north European overview). Based on this new research I present an updated
historical scenario of the expansion of the Single Grave Culture (SGC), as it represents
the most probable candidate for a language change in the later prehistory of Denmark. It
should be added that my interpretation goes further than the works referred to above,
which do not seriously consider the evidence from pollen diagrams and their implications
for a massive economic and ecological transformation. They leave open the question of
immigration versus social change.
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions118
provided such a massive demographic expansion within the short time
span that is indicated by both C14 dates and by pollen diagrams. The
population of Jutland doubled up several times during two to three
generations, and within 450 years this new population constructed an
estimated 30,000 family barrows according to a count made by Ebbesen
(Ebbesen 2006, table 8), while others have proposed 60,000 (Mads
Kähler Holst personal communication). Unfortunately the light sandy
soils of central and western Jutland have not preserved skeleton remains,
except as organic substance, which allows us to reconstruct the position
in the grave, which is always hocker, and to some degree height (adult or
child). The newcomers employed a burial ritual, a material culture, and a
Figure 1: Summary pollen diagram southern Thy in northwestern Jutland. The
diagram has been redrawn from Andersen (1995) by John Steinberg for his
PhD, and I thank him for permission to use it (Steinberg 1997, fig. 2.19). The
evidence corresponds rather closely to a diagram from Lake Solsø in western
Jutland (Odgård 1994, fig. 121).
technology fundamentally different from that of the TRB Culture.
Although attempts have been made to derive at least some of these
changes from a TRB culture in northwest Jutland that was already on its
way towards a herding economy and had changed its burial ritual to
stone packing graves (Damm 1993), there is a complete break in cultural
continuity at all levels. Those few elements that show familiarity with
Kristian Kristiansen 119
TRB tradition, can just as well be ascribed to local exchange, e.g. of flint
axes (Ebbesen 2006:229f.), as the SGC did not master the technology of
making good polished flint axes. They developed a rather more simple
technology for flint axe production, that demonstrate their lack of access
to the flint mines, which were still controlled by the TRB people. There
exist a handful of preserved skeletons from the middle phase of the SGC,
and they show physical traits distinctly different from the Megalithic
people of the TRB Culture, but which would account for the mixed and
much taller population known from the subsequent Dagger period that
(Petersen 1993). Also in Poland we find a new taller population
alongside with the original population (Dzieduszycka-Machnik and
Machnik 1990).
The new people applied an economy of herding that demanded large
tracts of grassland, but they also cultivated some barley in small plots
(Robinson and Kempfner 1987). Detailed pollen botanical analyses from
megaliths and SGC barrows in western Jutland have demonstrated that
the SGC economic strategy was radically different from that of the TRB
Culture. The TRB Culture employed a shifting economy where
secondary forests were maintained for later burning and fields, whereas
the SGC Culture would burn down all forest vegetation and maintain
open grasslands that were heavily grassed, just as they created and
maintained heath land for winter fodder by regular burning (Odgård and
Rostholm 1988; Andersen 1998). The SGC were mobile, employing
wheeled vehicles (van der Waals 1964), and during the same short period
they colonized the lighter soils of north-western Europe from Holland to
central Jutland, employing the same economic strategy of animal
husbandry and pastoral farming. These groups, variously labelled Single
Grave Culture or Battle Axe Culture, were an off-spring from the larger
pan-European Corded Ware Culture, and they shared with the steppe
cultures further east a burial ritual of small family barrows, where
individuals were buried mostly in hocked position, males on their right
side, women on their left side. The head normally faced their possible
tribal point of origin, south in Jutland, east or southeast in central and
east Europe (Kristiansen 1989, fig. 2). There is much to suggest,
however, that the colonizing groups from Holland to central Jutland
originated in the densely populated settlement area south of the Elbe
knee around the Saale river (Ebbesen 2006, fig. 134). This is based upon
close similarities in early axe types and pottery (Ebbesen 2006, fig. 120).
But it could also be argued that the Elbe-Saale groups were the first to
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions120
settle from a larger migration train that continued further north. They
moved up along the Elbe, some groups turned south towards the
Netherlands, and the largest groups turned north and followed the now
drowned coastal stretches up to Esbjerg. Here they moved inland and
colonized the central part of Jutland, while smaller groups continued
north along the coast to Thy, the same route that was later followed by
Bell Beaker groups (Vandkilde 2005; Pilar 2008).
The immigrants avoided the central settlement areas of the late TRB
culture, when possible (Davidsen 1973/74, fig.; Jørgensen 1985), and
soon there existed three radically different cultures with a different social
organization and economy in Denmark, and indeed south Scandinavia.
Along the coastal areas of Sweden and northern Jutland a maritime
fishing economy developed with a distinct material culture, the Pitted
Ware Culture, with an origin in the northern forest zone of Eurasia. In
eastern Denmark the TRB Culture prevailed and only gradually gave
way to the Single Grave Culture (Ebbesen 2006). Thus during the next
400 years south Scandinavia was a pamphlet of different, geographically
mutually exclusive cultures and economies, which most probably also
pertained to ethnic origins and language. However, only the Single Grave
and Battle Axe cultures were linked to similar cultures and economies
south of the Baltic, which were again part of the pan-European Corded
Ware cultures that now included most of the temperate zone. Thus the
prospects for the remaining TRB and Pitted Ware groups to maintain
their culture were not good, as they became increasingly isolated through
time.
From Holland to central Jutland these new colonizing groups of
northwest Europe employed the same material culture, mostly known
from the tens of thousands of family barrows, in Jutland alone more than
30,000 (Ebbesen 2006, table 8). Very few settlements are known, and
then from the latest phase. They show that houses were rather flimsy
constructions, and thus support the picture of a herding economy
originating in a social organization of mobility that now settled down.
Expansion, however, did not stop. After the initial phase of colonizing
the western and central parts of Jutland, off-spring groups went on
colonizing northern and eastern Jutland and the Danish Islands (Glob
1944, figs. 115 and 116), especially, northern Zealand and northern
Funen (Ebbesen 2006, figs. 46-47). Other groups penetrated southeastern
Jutland, southern Funen and the Baltic including Mecklenburg (Ebbesen
2006, figs. 18 and 21). We can trace this gradual eastward expansion in
Kristian Kristiansen 121
several pollen diagrams, as forest decline occur later in east Jutland and
on the Danish islands than in western Jutland (Aabye 1985; Odgård
1994, fig. 121 with a comparative diagram), just as it is less dramatic
than in western Jutland (Odgård 1994, fig. 121, Solsø, plus Figure 1
above). In eastern Denmark and Scania it was not until the later Bronze
Age that a completely open landscape for grazing emerged (Berglund
2006). This west-eastern gradient of delayed forest decimation in all
probability represents the expansion of the new SGC economy in a
process of acculturation with the final TRB groups, in eastern Jutland
and Scania documented in some detail (Sørensen 1995; Larsson 1993). It
was thus unlike the full-scale colonization of central and western Jutland.
Only the rather few initial colonizers in eastern Denmark employed the
SGC burial rite (Ebbesen 2006, fig. 96), whereas the acculturated TRB
people continued to use the megaliths, which is by far the most frequent
burial rite of this period (Ebbesen 2006, fig. 93).
The social organization of the SGC was based on an ideology of
male warriors being head of the family or kinship group, and warfare
was integrated in the social matrix of Corded Ware and later Bell Beaker
societies (Guilaime and Zammit 2005, ch. 4). Beautifully executed war
axes in stone, based upon Central European prototypes in copper, appear
in rapid typological succession. They are placed in front of the head of
the deceased. Beakers became more frequent over time, and an analysis
of an early type A beaker from Jutland showed that it had, in all
probability, contained beer and originated in the Elbe-Saale group
(Klassen 2005). Women were adorned with amber necklaces and
pendants, sewn onto the dress (Glob 1944, fig. 103; Ebbesen 2006, figs.
18 and 21). The archaeological evidence presents us with a
fundamentally new type of social organization that was shared from the
Urals to Northwestern Europe, and which was to prevail into the Bronze
Age (Kristiansen 2007). I shall now outline in brief its basic components
and their meaning.
A social model of the Single Grave Culture and related cultures.
I propose that the origin of the monogamous family, gender
divisions, and mobile property originated in the social transformations
that characterized western Eurasia from the late 4th millennium BC into
the 3rd millennium BC. I further propose that this became the foundation
for all later developments. This transformation, named Corded Ware and
Battle Axe cultures in central and western Europe, and Yamna cultures in
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions122
the Pontic steppe, involved altered definitions of family, property, and
inheritance, and it facilitated the formation of a mobile, agro-pastoral
society in the steppe region and beyond (Anthony 2007a, ch. 12-14; Kohl
2007, ch. 4; Vandkilde 2006; Harrisson and Heyd 2007, fig. 45). It
focused on the monogamous extended family as a central social and
economic unit, based on a patrilineal Omaha kinship system (see
discussion in Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, ch. 5.5), favoring the
accumulation of mobile wealth through expansion and exogamous
alliances, and its transmission between generations. The individualized
tumulus burials furnished with these very same symbols of wealth,
represented the ritualized institutionalization of these new principles,
now also transferred to the land of death. At death property had to be
redistributed through inheritance, and alliances with partners and clients
from near and far away had to be re-negotiated (Oestigaard and
Goldhahn 2006). Therefore the burial became an arena for a highly
formalized ritual that displayed basic principles of social standing. It was
embedded in a corresponding religious cosmology that developed into a
complex religious system by the 2nd millennium BC, when it is
manifested in written sources (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, ch. 6).
On Figure 2, I present a model of this social organization and its
basic components. They are composed by the family barrow or tumulus,
which became the ritualized extension of a new kinship system where the
transmission of mobile property (herds) played a crucial role through
inheritance and partnerships. The barrow thus defined ritually the free
man, his family and his property, and it also defined the male warrior as
heading a new institution of chieftainship (Vandkilde 2007). Male and
female gender are strictly and rigorously demarcated in burial ritual
through the orientation of the body, laying on left or right side, and this
system remained stable throughout western Eurasia. There can be no
doubt as to the important role of gender, although male burials always
outnumber female burials (Dornheim et al. 2005). Mobile societies of
herding often exhibit a strongly gendered division of labor, and this we
see reproduced in burial rituals throughout the 3rd, and 2nd millennia in
Eurasia. Although some agriculture was part of the economy, more so in
central and northern Europe, herding was the dominant economic
strategy. In an agro-pastoral society of herding based upon property of
animals and their produce rules of transmission and of inheritance
become important. Therefore, there had to be chiefs in charge of
maintaining and performing a corpus of ritualized rules. It was
Kristian Kristiansen 123
materialized in the ubiquitous, carefully executed war axe in precious
stone, copper, silver, or gold. We can now begin to see the contours of a
more complex division of social roles and institutions (Müller 2002;
Vandkilde 2006). Specialists, such as the metal smith, can be identified
in burials, and ritualized, priestly functions are also indicated in grave
goods. A complex society of warriors, priests, specialists, and
herders/farmers is emerging, albeit in embryonic form.
Figure 2: Model of basic material and institutional components of western
Eurasian societies of the 3rd millennium BC.
The expansion of this mobile agro-pastoral economy was rapid and
sometimes dramatic. During the early and middle Neolithic periods there
were still large forest reserves preserved in Europe, although mainly on
lighter soils. However, during the early 3rd millennium BC these areas
were colonized by expanding pastoral herders and warriors with an
apparently never ending appetite for new pastures (the secondary
products revolution in Andrew Sherratt’s terminology), who rapidly
burned down the forests to create grazing lands for their animals
(Andersen 1995 and 1998; Kremenetski 2003; Shishlina 2001). As landuse
was extensive it demanded much larger tracts of open land to feed
people and animals than in a more sedentary agrarian economy. The
newcomers practiced some cultivation of cereals, but the economy was
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions124
based on animal products from wool production to milk and meat
(Sherratt 1997). They expanded through a combination of warfare and
recruitment of new members through clientships and other means of
social dominance, including language. This was in some areas replaced
by mass migrations, as in the case of western Jutland.
From the late 3rd millennium this inland economic system, variously
termed Corded Ware, Single Grave, and Battle Axe cultures, was
complemented by a maritime counterpart in the form of the Bell Beaker
cultures that expanded along the western Mediterranean and along the
Atlantic façade before they moved inland, but they never reached further
east than Hungary. They brought with them metallurgical knowledge, in
addition to maritime skills, and they migrated as skilled artisans
according to recent strontium isotope analyses of teeth and bone (Price et
al. 2007; Heyd 2007; Vander Linden 2007). The beginning of the 2nd
millennium saw the integration between these two social and cultural
traditions, supplemented with a new bronze technology that was able to
mine and distribute large quantities of metal throughout Europe
(Harrison and Heyd 2007).
To summarize, during the 3rd millennium BC there emerged a new
social and economic order in Eurasia. Widespread travel, seasonal
transhumance, and some migrations accompanied these changes. By the
mid 3rd millennium BC common ritual and social institutions were
employed from the Urals to Northern Europe within the temperate
lowland zone (Kristiansen 2006c; Prescott and Walderhaug 1995). They
laid the foundation for later developments in social and economic
complexity within the same regions during the first half of the second
millennium BC. After 2000 BC this social formation was wedded to a
new metal economy based on mining and the distribution of copper and
tin from a few source areas to the societies of western Eurasia. It
introduced new divisions of labor and new specialist skills, a new
concept of commodity trade parallel to trade in prestige goods
The expansion of Bell Beakers and flint daggers in south
Scandinavia 2350-1750 BC and the formation of a Nordic prestige goods
sphere of cultural integration
From ca. 2300 to 1700 BC a new historical period of cultural
integration prevailed in south Scandinavia. It was initiated by the
migration of Bell Beaker groups into Jutland, who brought with them
new skills in mining and sailing, and who started to mine flint in northern
Kristian Kristiansen 125
Jutland for mass production of flint daggers that were soon distributed to
most of Scandinavia. It was later followed by a similar production in
southeast Denmark (Apel 2001). This period marks the first introduction
of metal into Scandinavia, and the dagger production represented an
imitation of copper and bronze prototypes. It also represents the
introduction of a new more ranked social organization (Lekberg 2002;
Prieto-Martinez 2008; Sarauw 2007; Vandkilde 2005). Large chiefly
houses similar to those found in the Unetice Culture appears in south
Scandinavia (Artursson 2005), and speaks of a radical reorganization of
economy and social organization which wiped out or integrated the
diverse cultural and economic traditions of the previous period into a
single south Scandinavian cultural sphere, although with regional
variations in burial ritual (Stensköld 2004). Thus the old core of the SGC
in Jutland maintained itself in burial ritual with a preference for barrows,
whereas a new semi-megalithic tradition of long stone cists for multiple
burials prevails in southeast Scandinavia. In pollen diagrams this is a
period of continued expansion of open land, as well as colonization of
new areas, such as south central Sweden (Lekberg 2002). There is much
to suggest that the Dagger Period represents not only social and
economic integration but also the formation of a shared Nordic language
based upon the frequent interaction that followed from the distribution of
flint daggers. It was in part based upon new maritime skills, allowing
crossings over the Skagerak between northern Jutland and southern
Norway (Østmo 2005).
What we witness during the 3rd millennium BC in Scandinavia is a
pattern to be repeated during the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. New
foreign influences create a period of divergence in social and economic
organization, most probably also in terms of languages spoken. This is
followed by a long period of integration of these diverse traditions and
languages into a single Nordic tradition. As this cyclical development
recur during the subsequent millennia, I shall only present a brief sketch
of developments during the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, to underline the
argument.
The introduction of foreign bronze metalwork and the disintegration
of the Nordic prestige good sphere into a western and an eastern zone
(1750-1500 BC).
After a long consolidated period of demographic and economic
growth during the Dagger period, there now followed a dynamic period
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions126
of technological and probably social change, which represents the fullscale
adoption of bronze production. It was based upon the introduction
of new skills and metal from travelling chiefs from the Carpathian region
and from mainly south Germany and England (Vandkilde 1996). They
introduced new weapons, most importantly the sword and lance, and
with that also followed new social institutions of a chiefly warrior
aristocracy. But more importantly they rendered the large-scale
production of flint daggers obsolete, and replaced it with new networks
that linked south Scandinavia with regions of much greater social and
economic complexity to the south. The eastern network comprised south
Sweden and the Danish Islands, plus northern Jutland, the old core area
of the megalithic culture. The southwestern network comprised mostly
central Jutland, the old core area of the Single Grave Culture. In the
eastern zone hoard deposition prevailed in the western zone tumulus
burial. There can be little doubt that some chiefly persons and their
retinue from Germany settled in Jutland, just as travellers from the
Carpathians reached southeast Scandinavia. Marriage alliances can also
be documented in the appearance of female ornament sets in some
burials (Bergerbrant 2007). This was a period of strong foreign
influences and local reception, which in the end would lead to the
formation of a new Nordic culture and society.
Social transformation and the formation of a Nordic culture and
cosmology around 1500 BC, and its long-term continuity until 450 BC.
After 1500 BC a rapid internal social and cultural change
transformed Scandinavia into a fully developed Bronze Age society with
its own distinct Nordic cultural style. It represents an explosion of
creativity at all levels of society, from house construction, to the
construction of tens of thousands of barrows. A diverse range of new
bronze tools, weapons, and ornaments make their appearance, and they
are lavishly deposited in thousands of burials and hoards during the 1000
years to come. Certain phenomena characterize the early phase of this
remarkable period of Nordic integration and prosperity. Thus, a
minimum of 50-60,000 barrows were constructed in Denmark during the
period 1450-1150 BC, that is a period of ca. 300 years. Some estimates
suggest even higher numbers. A new three aisled construction of houses
were adapted from Holland to Scandinavia, and it allowed a more varied
use of space, among them the stalling of cattle (Arnoldussen and
Fokkens 2008). Although farms and hamlets were evenly spread in the
Kristian Kristiansen 127
landscape, we see a distinct hierarchy in the size of farms, which spans
from large chiefly farms with stalling for cattle to rather small houses
without stallings (Artursson 2005; Kristiansen 2006b). Chiefly halls were
8 to 10 meters wide and length could be from 30 to 50 meters. The
Nordic Bronze Age culture was based on a high frequency of interaction,
among other things necessitated by the distribution of metal. A shared
language was a necessary outcome of this new social and cultural
integration. A shared Nordic cosmology is also evidenced in iconography
on metal and in rock art. These shared identities in culture, language, and
cosmology, including social institutions, make it plausible that there
existed a common Nordic ethnic identity of some form.
However, there is also a distinct influence from the south German
Tumulus Culture in the formation of this new Nordic Bronze Age
society. Warrior swords of the flange hilted type, as well as octagonal
hilted swords, were shared between south Germany and Denmark
(Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, fig. 107). It demonstrates how foreign
trade and political alliances linked Scandinavia to the common European
Bronze Age, at the same time as it developed its own Nordic identity in
culture, cosmology, and language. It further demonstrates a complex and
sophisticated use of material culture to serve as an identity marker for
different social groups with different geographical distributions. The
Tumulus Culture may thus represent an early form of Germanic, but the
interaction between the two regions suggests that language differences
were easily overcome.
The introduction of iron technology and break down of Nordic
interaction followed by cultural disintegration. Reorganization of
settlement and economy (450-150 BC).
The introduction of iron technology and the decline of bronze
technology led in some regions to a major social and economic
transformation (Jensen 1997). The old Bronze Age regime had caused
overexploitation and exhaustion of soils, especially in Jutland, and when
the supply of bronze ceased the Nordic chiefly networks collapsed. In
Jutland thousands of Bronze Age farmsteads and hamlets were given up,
and moved together into villages (Rindel 1999). In eastern Denmark and
southern Sweden changes were apparently more gradual, but numerous
local groups replace the previously shared Nordic culture, each with their
own distinctive variations in material culture and burial rituals. The ritual
and social ethos is one of egalitarian communities, and new cemeteries
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions128
are being formed to replace the use of the old Bronze Age barrows.
These changes suggest a major social transformation, or even revolution,
most pronounced in Jutland. Here new links were soon forged with the
emerging Jastorf Culture of northwest Germany (Brandt 2001), and after
150 BC a new period of economic prosperity begins, which was linked to
a reopening of trade with the southern La Tène Culture (Bockius and
Luczkiewicz 2004), and later the expanding Roman Empire.
Cultural and economic integration from 150 BC to 1000 AD.
From the beginning of Roman influence in Scandinavia around 150
BC until the end of the Viking period, Scandinavia was increasingly
integrated by trade, political alliances, and the distribution of Roman
imports (Hedeager 1987), later followed by the spoils of warfare and
trade that ended shortly after 1000 AD (Jensen 2004). During the last
centuries of the Pre-Roman period most of the former unsettled heavy
moraine is settled, and the landscape is organized into bounded fields for
agrarian production, grazing land, and meadows for hay production and
winter fodder. After 200 AD farms grow in seize and culminate during
the Viking period, reflecting a prolonged period of economic and
demographic growth, although a setback occurred after the fall of the
West Roman Empire. The demographic growth led to migrations and
colonizations, based upon the maritime capacity of the Viking ship. It is
thus a period of increasing interaction, leading to the formation of a
Nordic culture, which is reflected in a similar development of a shared
Norse language. Roman prestige goods were shared during the Roman
period, whereas a specific Scandinavian style only developed after the
fall of the Roman Empire (Hedeager 2003).
Model of language change in later Scandinavian prehistory
Below I summarize developments in material culture and language in
south Scandinavia from 3000 BC to 1000 AD, showing a cyclical change
between shorter periods of disintegration and long periods of integration.
I suggest some tentative names for the changes of language. My findings
suggest that Mallory and Adams are correct in their suggestion of a much
older age for Germanic and Norse (referred to in §1). In conclusion I
shall discuss in more detail the historical and theoretical implications of
the model.
Kristian Kristiansen 129
2850-2350 BC SGC, Pitted Ware and Disintegration, SGC = ProtoTRB
Germanic
2350-1750 BC Dagger period Integration = formation of Proto-
Norse
1750-1500 BC Early Bronze Age Disintegration = west/east Germanic
1500-450 BC Nordic Bronze Age Integration = mature Norse/Gothic
450-150 BC Pre-roman Iron Age Disintegration = west/east Germanic
150 BC-1000 AD Roman and Viking Age Integration = traditional Norse
Conclusion: language, cosmology, and ethnic identity revisited
In this article I have analyzed the later prehistory of south
Scandinavia from a specific perspective of cultural integration/
disintegration, including cosmology, ethnicity, and language. Other
perspectives will surely be able to provide other results where the dagger
period or the early Bronze Age will reveal many nuances and variations
that I have not employed. However, I believe that the type of analysis I
have conducted may provide a more critical starting point for a
discussion of the relationship between material culture as symbolic
communication, language, ethnic identity, and cosmology. And I hope
this may also have some interest for current debates and research into the
history of Indo-European languages and indirectly also their relationship
with a specific cosmology and the related notion of ethnic identity or
cultural self-consciousness. A main thrust of my presentation is the
historical introduction and European wide expansion of a new
institutionalized perception of family, gender divisions and property in
the early 3rd millennium BC, which became the foundation for all later
developments. It implies that the social and cultural dynamics of later
European prehistory were conditioned by the relative autonomy of
family based households, but with a potential for forming large scale
social and economic networks where especially male warriors/traders
travelled long distances along alliance networks. Clientship systems have
been proposed to be at the heart of such networks (Olmsted 1999;
Anthony 2007a:349ff.). They account for the capacity of certain forms of
“international” weapons to crosscut “local cultures” (Kristiansen and
Larsson 2005, fig. 107). In this way different parts of material culture
served different purposes for local, regional, and interregional identities.
It further demonstrates that there are no clear-cut correspondences
between material culture and various forms of identities, as they need to
be spelled out in concrete analyses and interpretations of social
institutions/groups. Long-term social and economic trajectories,
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions130
however, determined the degree of cultural and political divergence/
convergence, which also had implications for language change.
Another conclusion from the archaeological case study was that
Germanic and Old Norse, when first attested in the Iron Age, is a several
thousand year old language that had already been divided into a northern
and southern branch two thousand years before it is historically attested.
I further demonstrated a recurring historical dynamic between a southwestern
and a south-eastern interaction zone, which may account for
what is later termed West and East Germanic. The south-western zone
corresponded in many ways to the original Single Grave Cultural zone
from Holland, the Elbe-Saale region to northern Jutland at the Limfjord.
It thus contained a language substratum reaching back to the oldest phase
of Proto-Germanic or western PIE. However, after each such period of
profound external influence the south Scandinavian or Nordic zone
would again be re-established and last for a long time, which suggests
that it represents a very old tradition in both language and cosmology.
The Pre-Roman Iron Age is just another such recurring period after a
social transformation (the end of the Bronze Age, analyzed by Jørgen
Jensen 1997), where North Germanic and La Tène (Celtic) traditions
penetrate Jutland, and become North- or Northwest Germanic
(sometimes termed the Jasdorf Culture). The old Nordic Bronze Age
tradition is preserved in Sweden and on the Danish Islands for another
hundred or two hundred years and as these regions were not subject to
drastic changes it would be a logical conclusion that the Bronze Age
language survived as Gothic after the migrations to the Black Sea area.
Thus, North Germanic is a historically late construction formed after
the collapse of the Nordic Bronze Age tradition, but albeit with ancestral
traditions. It would later be superseded by the development of the
Scandinavian language or Old Norse in the course of the Iron Age, once
again re-establishing the Nordic zone, as it had happened previously in
the late 3rd millennium BC and in the mid 2nd millennium BC. It is
suggested that this historical dynamic between convergence and
divergence of cultural traditions in the widest sense have always existed.
The formation of a new regional tradition would depend on the social
and economic force of one of the previously local traditions, whose
tradition and language would then dominate the larger tradition
(Kristiansen 1998, fig. 221). That would explain why North Germanic
became the dominant language of the later Iron Age, whereas Gothic
died out as a living language when it ceased to be spoken in Scandinavia.
Kristian Kristiansen 131
From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age we may postulate an increasing
trend towards larger regional traditions (Robb 1993), which consolidated
in the Bronze Age. From then on cultural dynamics are rather repetitive,
with the exception of empire formation.
We can observe that during the early Iron Age a certain regional
identity in material culture most probably corresponded to a language
group (Northwest Germanic/Jasdorf Culture). Whether this was also an
ethnic identity is difficult to know. However, we note that many local
ethnic identities are mentioned by classical Roman authors, such as
Tacitus during the earlier Iron Age, which corresponds quite well with
the patchwork of archaeological local groups of the early Iron Age
(typical for a period of reorganization). They are then overtaken by much
larger ethnic groupings during the later Iron Age, a development that in
many ways can be sustained archaeologically and in language, where
also the new runic alphabet is introduced (Stoklund 2006). Similar
observations of a correspondence between archaeological groupings and
language can be observed during the early Iron Age in the Mediterranean
(Kristiansen 1998, fig. 219). Thus, we can conclude that at least in
certain conditions, language/dialects and material culture overlaps (Hall
1997:177ff.). But what about the larger ethnic consciousness, such as
Greek or Nordic, terms we know were actively used in later historically
attested situations. This is still a matter of debate (discussion in Hall
1997; Finkelberg 2005). I consider it most likely that such overarching
ethnic identity was employed also during later prehistory, otherwise it
becomes difficult to understand the clear demarcation of borders in
material culture and cosmology between Nordic and non-Nordic during
the Bronze Age. It can further be demonstrated that the defining elements
in this shared Nordic culture were linked to a symbolic identity of myth
and cosmological origins (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, ch. 6 and 7).
The long periods with an established Nordic tradition (convergence)
are thus to be considered “normal” during this three thousand year long
interval, and the periods with cultural divisions and language divisions/
dialects (divergence) are intermediate periods of social and economic reorganization
and cultural hybridization. Such periods would also
profoundly change religion and cosmology, and therefore it is not
surprising that Norse mythology contains rather little of its Bronze Age
origins (Kristiansen 2006a), in opposition to Celtic mythology in Ireland,
because south Scandinavia was much more influenced by the turmoil and
the historical changes on the European continent. On the other hand these
Proto-Indo-European Languages and Institutions132
changes rarely implied immigrations of new people with new languages,
as it happened on the continent. Therefore a Nordic cultural and
cosmological self-consciousness in material culture, and ethnic identity I
suggest, could develop and be maintained for thousands of years. It is
worth noticing, however, that it was not until the beginning of the Bronze
Age that such larger regional traditions in language, cosmology, and
probably an overarching ethnic identity, would develop, due to the highly
increased capacity and need for interaction in order to distribute metal,
which also implied a highly increased information flow. In that sense the
Bronze Age represents something radically new compared to the
preceding Neolithic period.
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