http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/LR33.htm

ASLIP Conference on Central and South Asia

Michael Witzel

From May 12-14 this year we held the Third Harvard Round table on
Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia. It was co-sponsored by ASLIP
and the Infinity Foundation (http://www.infinityfoundation.com). This
year's Round Table was attended by 25 invited speakers/discussants
from India, Europe and America, and a considerable number of
additional participants, from Daghestan to Rochester, NY., including
Hal Fleming and Daniel McCall, Mary Ellen Lepionka, and the ASLIP
members listed below by order of appearance (Zide, Anderson, Patnaik,
Witzel, Bengtson, Meadow, Farmer, Miller).

Aims.

In his summary of genetic studies, L. Cavalli-Sforza writes: "... the
need for a multidisciplinary approach, ... from historical demography
to archaeology, palaeoanthropology and linguistics, and perhaps
ethnography, together with population and molecular genetics" (1994:
372). This is precisely what we have been doing over the past three
years at our Round Table.

            These days, philologists, linguists and geneticists find
themselves between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, the
'indigenist' one in archaeology where "... the English speaking
archaeological world, ... adopted an essentially unanimous rejection
of "migrationism" (Cavalli-Sforza 1995: 138-139), and on the other
hand, the present Indian revisionist movement which rejects any
immigration (Aryan, Dravidian, etc.) into the
subcontinent. Interestingly, revisionists hardly speak about the
"African Eve".

            We have discussed these issues at great length, and from
various angles, without a preset agenda or a preconceived outcome:
what does language tell us, how does it fit the present evidence of
archaeology, of multivariate anthropological analysis, and of
principal component and non-recombinant Y-chromosome genetic studies?

            As in past years, the meeting was held in the form of a
frank open-ended and detailed discussion of specialists and some
interested lay persons. We had a detailed update on the present state
of affairs.

 

Program.

This year's meeting (for updates and reports see our permanent site:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTableSchedule.html)
concentrated, to a large degree, on linguistics, especially that of
the neglected Munda group of languages. We had a virtual
mini-conference of leading specialists in the field who had the chance
to meet for the first time after many years:

            N. ZIDE: Introduction

            D. STAMPE: The current state of Munda and Austroasiatic
            studies, with special reference to lexicography

            G. ANDERSON: Recent Advances in the Reconstruction of
            Proto-Munda and Proto-Austroasiatic Morphology

            P. DONEGAN: Typology and drift in Munda.
            A. GRIFFITHS: A report on fieldwork in Koraput District,
            Orissa: the Senior Gadba tribe and the Gutob language

            M. PATNAIK: A synchronic analysis of linguistic divergence
            in South Asia: A case study of the verb 'say'

[An outcome of our informal discussions is that there is some hope now
for a comparative. etymological dictionary of Munda]

However, we did not neglect other language families: Dravidian was
represented twice:

            S. STEEVER: Historical Dravidian linguistics: the need of
            internal reconstruction to balance the results of the
            comparative method.

            S. PALANIAPPAN: Culture change in Tamil Nadu in the early
            centuries CE.;

and Tibeto-Burmese figured at least with Manipuri:

            S. RAY : The many forms of Meitei Mayek: orthographic
            debates in Meitei language.
 
Another highlight of this year's meeting was a state of the art
overview of genetics, especially that of non-recombinant Y-chromosome
genetic studies, which was presented by a former Cavalli-Sforza
student (now teaching at Sassari, Sardinia):

            P. FRANCALACCI : The peopling of Eurasia: the contribution
            of Y-chromosome analysis.
 
            As usual, we continued our discussions about the links
            between archaeology, texts, and language. This year, we
            explored, from various angles, the northwest of and areas
            further northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the
            Bactria-Margiana Archaeological complex, and their mutual
            relationships from the Indus civilization onwards. (Note
            that F. Hiebert's Anau seal, if indeed local, would be the
            first written evidence of the BMAC language, at c. 2300
            BCE).

            H.-P. FRANCFORT: Perspectives on the origins and religious
            aspects of the Oxus Civilization (BMAC)

            G. THOMPSON: The relationship between Vedic and Avestan:
            the provenance of Soma, amshu, and its relation to the
            BMAC?

            B. LAWERGREN: On Bactria-Margiana and later Iranian
	    trumpets

            F. HIEBERT: The recently discovered Bronze Age inscription
            (2300 BC) from Anau, Central Asia.

            M. WITZEL: Central Asian substrate languages

            J. BENGTSON: Genetic and cultural links between Burushaski
            and the Caucasian languages and Basque
 
Prominently present, as every year, were the Indus civilization and
related theoretical issues,

            R. MEADOW: Current excavations at Harappa

            R. MUGHAL: Cemeteries of Late Harappan period at Harappa

            B. WELLS: The geographical distribution of Indus signs 

            S. FARMER: Three problems in Indology approached from
            comparative perspectives: textual layering, the dates of
            the Vedas, and the Harappan 'writing' question.

            K. YOUNG: Searching for Clues to Indian Prehistory Around
            and Across the Arabian Sea: Are Nubia, Punt (on the
            eastern coast of the Red Sea), Indus Valley, and Tamilnadu
            Linked and If So, How?
 
            D.P. AGRAWAL: The Central Himalayas in the archaeology of
            the Northern Plains, and the myth of Vedic Aryans
 
Some more theoretical issues were dealt with by :

            G. POSSEHL: Franz Boas on Race, Language and Culture

            H. MILLER: A look at method and theory: the example of
            Biblical Archaeology

And, last but not least, we had a refreshing view of one of our
classical texts of state craft:

            B. BROOKS: The Arthashastra Core as a Maurya Document

We plan to continue the Round Table during this academic year. Some
finical support has already been secured. Results, handouts and full
papers relating to the Round Table will be published, this Fall, at
its website:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTable2001