International Conference on the Substrate and Remnant Languages

of South, Southeast, East Asia & Sahul  Land:

"The Year of the Australoid"

(9th HARVARD ROUND TABLE ON THE ETHNOGENESIS  OF  SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA, ESCA):

sponsored by the Asia Center (Harvard U.) and  the
Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP)

Location:  1 Bow Street, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies,  Cambridge, MA 02138

Date:  October 21-22, 2006. 9:00 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Some background information
 

Information for Invited Guests
 
Talk Schedule  • Conference Location • Cambridge Weather •  Hotels • Contact
 
 

 
SCHEDULE OF TALKS

* M. Witzel
opening;  note:  the official annual meeting of ASLIP will occur at the close of business on Sunday, October 22nd

* Hal Fleming (Boston U.)
discusses the scientific problems associated with this conference, including discussing the various hypotheses which have been advanced over the years. This will include an overview of ASLIP’s long term goals and brief overviews of the prehistoric problems presented by bio-genetics + physical anthropology, archeology, genetic linguistics and ethnology. The concept of the “Australoid” will be discussed in passing. Some of the conclusions of the following speakers will be brushed upon lightly.

* Jonathan Morris (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
will present a fleshed out overview of Alfredo Trombetti’s hypotheses which include much work by Gatti. A handout of supporting linguistic data, generated by Gatti and Trombetti, will be distributed to the meeting. Morris’s summary includes Trombetti’s physical or “racial” hypotheses.

* James Harrod (Portland, Maine)
will sum up the archeological information on India for the relevant time period (roughly 100,000 to fairly recent times.

* Franklin Southworth (U. of Penn.)
will present his conclusions about linguistic sub-strata in greater India.

* Asha Mundlay (U. of Pune)
cannot be  present; we will present her conclusions on the position of Nihali in the linguistic prehistory of South Asia.

* B.K. Rana (Harvard U.)
will discuss the Kusunda and what they can tell us about greater India.

*John Bengtson (Santa Fe Inst.)
will discuss the Austric / Austro-Thai taxa.

* Hal Fleming (Boston U.)
will present a synopsis of Cavalli-Sforza’s conclusions about the entire area, based on traditional or classical blood groups, serology, and other pre-DNA genetic methods.

* Norman Zide (U. of Chicago)  (TBA)

* George van Driem (Leiden U.)
will discuss linguistic taxonomy vis-à-vis genetic data and/or conclusions for greater India and Southeast Asia

* Peter Underhill (Stanford U.)
will present his conclusions for the entire region based on bio-genetic data.

* Vaclav Blazhek (Masaryk University)
will present his conclusions about the Dravidian-Australian linguistic relationship. These, especially the data, will be interesting to compare with those of Gatti and Trombetti

* Timothy Usher (Rosetta Project)
will present his conclusions on Andamanese and  on Indo-Pacific.

* Paul Black (Darwin, Australia)
will present some hypotheses on the external relations of Australian.

* Paul Whitehouse (Santa Fe Institute)
will present some hypotheses about Australian and Papuan or about the Indo-Pacific hypothesis of Greenberg.
 
 

Additional  papers after the regular meeting:

* Murray Denofsky (Sommerville, MA)
will  to talk about phono-symbolism and language classification.
 
 

* ANNUAL ASLIP BUSINESS MEETING
reports, election of officers, etc.
following the conclusion of the conference