[Regia-NA] FW: [BRITARCH] BBC 2 Newsnight tonight! Languages in Prehistoric Britain

[Nicholson, Andrew]

For interest 

-----Original Message-----
From: British archaeology discussion list [mailto:BRITARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]
On Behalf Of Win Scutt
Sent: 03 January 2007 16:42
To: BRITARCH at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [BRITARCH] BBC 2 Newsnight tonight! Languages in Prehistoric
Britain

Hi all, and Happy New Year!

I know this is a topic that pops up quite frequently on Britarch, but the
question of which languages were spoken in Britain in prehistory has been
the subject of my research for the last five years - and is featured on BBC
2 Newsnight tonight (prog starts 10.30, but feature is around 11pm).

I know too that this is a very controversial issue, but I hope you will keep
an open mind! Here it is in a sort of nutshell:

Previously my research had been in landscape archaeology in SW England and I
had started to notice that many place-names better described the functions
of places in prehistory than in the early medieval period. So I developed a
test that compared place-names with landscape change; and I also examined
Roman place-names for Old English elements and contexts.
While there can be no certainties in this kind of research, it became very
clear to me that the case for a forerunner of English being spoken in much
of eastern Britain in prehistory is much stronger than it is for a 'Celtic'
language. 

The notion that English was brought to eastern Britain by post-Roman
invaders seems to have its origins in the thoughts of 16th century
historians. After all, looking at a linguistic map of Britain with 'Celtic'
to the west and Germanic to the east, at the same time as reading Nennius,
Gildas and Bede, it's not surprising that someone should reach that
conclusion. But, in my view, a Germanic language (or a group of Germanic
languages) were brought by people much, much earlier than this.

Recently I have begun to collaborate with Stephen Oppenheimer (Oxford) and
Peter Forster (Cambridge) who have been coming to similar conclusions
completely independently and from different angles: Stephen mainly through
genetics and Peter mainly through phylogenetic networks applied to language.

I have written a paper for Antiquity called "An English Prehistory" which I
have been invited to resubmit. I have uploaded the draft (without
illustrations) to http://writeboard.com/a1f300104540dbaa4 The password is
'durrington'. I would very much welcome comments and amendments from all
Britarchers - preferably polite ones please! You can find more details on my
website at www.archaeology.ws

Best Wishes

Win 
 


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