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Paper presented in the symposium, "Oral Tradition, Language, and
Archaeology in Mutual Support – Southwestern USA and Northern
Mexico," Lynn Teague and Hartman Lomawaima, organizers. Fifth World
Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC.
The papers in this session and in recent edited volumes (Blench and
Spriggs 1997, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; Renfrew and Bellwood 2001; Madsen
and Rhode 1994) indicate that there is growing interest in research
that integrates prehistoric archaeology and historical linguistics.
My own interest in bringing these fields together stems from awareness
of the quantum leap in understanding that typically follows decipherment
of ancient scripts. It is obvious that, if we can determine the language
spoken by creators of an archaeological complex, we can obtain a much
deeper understanding of their culture and history by integrating the
precise spatial, chronological, and behavioral data of archaeology with
the rich conceptual data embedded in language. The benefits of such
integration have yet to be widely felt for nonliterate societies because
we are still working on methods that relate protolanguages to the archaeological
record. My hope is that, once these methods are developed, the study
of nonliterate societies might evolve to look much more like the study
of literate ones.
My cursory reading of the literature suggests that existing methods
for relating protolanguages to archaeological complexes fall into three
areas. (SLIDE 1) First, in purely archaeological approaches, the findings
of historical linguistics are fitted to the form of the archaeological
record without attempting to forge any direct links between the two
(Ford et al. 1972; Renfrew 1987). Second, in ecological approaches,
cognate terms for plants and animals are related to their natural ranges,
and the homeland is inferred to lie in the area where these ranges overlap
(Fowler 1983). Third, in technological approaches, cognate terms for
innovations like corn agriculture, horse domestication, or metallurgy
are related to manifestations in the archaeological record (Mallory
1989; Hill 2001).
(2) All these approaches assume, at least implicitly, that conceptual
data are not obtainable from archaeology. As a result, even the more
compelling ecological and technological approaches rely on correlations
between cognate terms and objective, real-world entities. That is, terms
for real-world entities, reconstructed from cognates in genetically-related
languages, are correlated with the distribution of these entities in
time and space to situate a protolanguage.
These sorts of arguments have several limitations. (3) First, it is
difficult to situate a protolanguage if our knowledge of the physical
entities referred to in the reconstructed vocabulary is limited. Second,
we cannot necessarily conclude that the practices implied in a reconstructed
vocabulary necessarily relate to the earliest instances of these practices
in the archaeological record. Third, people can apply existing terms
to new entities when they move to a new environment or are exposed to
a new technology. Finally, cross-cultural research (Lakoff 1987) shows
that there is significant variation in the ways different cultures group
real-world entities into categories. So the task of mapping concepts
of a protolanguage onto real-world entities is not as straightforward
as it might seem at first.
(4) I think what we need to overcome these limitations are methods that
identify correspondences in the concepts themselves, instead of correlations
between concepts and the physical world. I believe we can do this through
study of the conceptual metaphors embedded in both material culture
and language. In 1990, Eve Sweetser showed that metaphors of protolanguages
can be reconstructed through attention to polysemy, or the relationships
between multiple senses of words; and etymology, especially the concepts
brought together in coining compound words. My own research (Ortman
2000) shows that conceptual metaphors can also be reconstructed through
analysis of figurative expressions in the archaeological record (see
also Potter 2002, Tilley 1999). Based on these findings, I argue that
we can use metaphor analysis to identify conceptual correspondences
between language and material culture directly. I think this is a stronger
basis for associating protolanguages with archaeological complexes than
our current methods allow. In my presentation today I will review what
conceptual metaphor is, and give an example which shows how we can use
metaphor analysis to identify the language spoken by the creators of
an archaeological complex.
Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon through which abstract concepts are
understood in terms of more concrete ones (Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
Similarities in the image-schema structure of two domains of experience
motivates a mapping of entities, properties, and relations from the
more concrete domain to the more abstract one. Metaphor results from
this mapping process. (5)You all know what I mean when I say, "I’m
laying the foundations of my argument," because you have internalized
the metaphor ARGUMENTS ARE BUILDINGS, and of course no building can
stand without a solid foundation. If you think for a moment about the
language we use in conference presentations, you will see that it is
actually very difficult for us to even think about scholarly discourse
without using metaphors like MENTAL PROCESSES ARE PHYSICAL PROCESSES.
This is exactly the point. The use of concrete, bodily experience to
conceptualize and reason about more abstract phenomena is in fact the
basis of thought.
Most of us notice the novel metaphors that make poetry so concise and
meaningful, (6) but we also use hundreds of metaphors unconsciously
and automatically in everyday thinking and communicating. These conventional
metaphors are part of the cognitive unconscious of our culture. Conventional
metaphors vary significantly across cultures (7) because people live
in a variety of environments and have different economies, histories,
and technologies. However, this variation is ultimately limited by our
basic bodily experiences. So human cognition is neither universal nor
radically relative.
Cognitive linguistics is a field that studies figurative speech in terms
of the imagery it expresses. (8) Three findings of this field suggest
that expressions of metaphor should have the same structure in language
and material culture: 1) speech expresses conventional metaphors in
a coherent and systematic way; 2) this systematicity derives from the
nature of metaphor and not language per se; and 3) speech is only one
medium through which metaphors can be expressed. (9) As a result, we
can use properties of metaphor identified in cognitive linguistic research
to verify apparent figurative expressions in the archaeological record.
In my previous work (Ortman 2000) I used six properties to verify the
existence of several metaphors in the archaeological record of ancestral
Pueblo people in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah. Archaeologists
call this area the Mesa Verde region, (10) after the famous cliff dwellings
of Mesa Verde proper. But people with Mesa Verde culture ranged over
the much larger area on this map, with Mesa Verde itself in the southeast
corner. There is abundant evidence from textiles, pottery designs, mural
paintings, and architecture which suggests that between A.D. 1020 and
1280, a variety of phenomena were conceptualized using container metaphors
in this culture. I don’t have time to go into the details, but
I can summarize the results.
First, pottery designs were conceptualized as textile patterns (Ortman
2000). (11) This slide presents a summary of the evidence that supports
this conclusion. The flow of ideas was clearly directional, from more
concrete textiles to less inherently structured pottery surfaces, because
textile details which derive automatically from weaving processes were
routinely mapped onto pottery; and every analogous feature I have studied
was invented in textiles before it started showing up in pottery. The
mapping was superordinate, because the imagery of four different textile
media, coiled and plaited basketry, non-loom and loom weaving, were
all mapped onto pottery. There are also restrictions on the placement
of decorative elements that are consistent with the invariance principle,
and thus cannot be explained without metaphor.
This metaphor was constitutive because textile imagery was pervasive
in pottery designs for a two century period. Blended imagery, through
which loom weavings were either conceptually "draped" over
the vessel using the model of plaited basketry, or "banded"
using the model of coiled basketry, is common in pottery, and restrictions
in this blending are consistent with the invariance principle. Finally,
there are spatial patterns in the designs that correlate with the exposure
of potters to different textile industries, consistent with the experiential
principle.
I’ve applied this same method to a study of architecture and mural
painting, and have found that buildings were also conceptualized using
container imagery (see Ortman 2002). (12) I’ve compiled a list
of all known decorated buildings in the Mesa Verde region, and have
found 22 compositions which decorate round kiva walls as pottery bowls.
This map shows their distribution relative to all known decorated buildings.
(13) It is clear that these structures were imagined as pottery bowls,
and not the other way around, because architectural details are not
depicted on pottery, whereas pottery details are obvious on the kivas.
I’ve also found a few granaries that were decorated as seed storage
jars (14). Finally, the cribbed roofs of most kivas (15) mirror the
appearance of an overturned, coiled basket.
I have also found 41 buildings decorated (16) with horizon scenes like
this one, with projecting mountains, which suggest that the world itself
could be imagined as a giant building or shelter. These designs decorate
surface rooms, kivas, great kivas, and towers (17), but because you
cannot be outside the horizon, these murals almost always occur on interior
walls. In addition, there are a number of compositions, like this one,
that blend container and landscape imagery in a single composition.
(18) This blended imagery is widespread, and demonstrates that container
metaphors were used to model the world as well as buildings. (19) For
example, the elements of horizon scene murals on the roof supports of
this kiva, between the lower and upper halves of the structure, suggests
that it is a microcosm presenting the earth as a pottery bowl and the
sky as a coiled basket.
Finally, during the thirteenth-century, (20) village architecture expressed
container imagery (see Ortman and Bradley 2002). These villages were
built around canyonheads that present earthen enclosures of rock and
soil; they had a "rim" formed by an enclosing wall; they contained
water issuing from a spring within; they were "decorated"
with houses that faced inward, toward the low center of the local environment;
(21) and they contained communal spaces open to the sky, like the plaza
in this village. There is also evidence that communal feasting took
place regularly in these villages (Potter and Ortman 2002). This reflection
of serving vessels in village architecture suggests that domestic meals
were used to model community organization during the final decades of
Pueblo occupation.
(22) This slide summarizes some of the evidence I’ve found which
supports the conclusion that a wide variety of phenomena were conceptualized
as containers in Mesa Verde Pueblo culture. (23) This next slide summarizes
the history of development of specific container metaphors in the Mesa
Verde region. You can see that, over time, imagery that had previously
been restricted to actual containers was extended to a variety of larger
and more abstract phenomena, including buildings, villages, and the
landscape itself. It is also important to note that, although a relationship
between textiles and pottery is apparent across much of the Colorado
Plateau, the imagery I’ve been discussing forms a coherent complex
only in the Mesa Verde region. With this knowledge in mind, we can now
examine modern pueblo languages to determine those languages in which
these specific metaphors are embedded. If we can find evidence that
these concepts are restricted to a particular language family, our conclusion
would be that Mesa Verde puebloans spoke a language of this family.
Let’s look at terms related to the Mesa Verde metaphor complex
in Tewa, Hopi, Keres, and Zuni, representatives of the four known pueblo
language families. (24) This table lists 14 terms, and highlights those
that contain etymological evidence of the metaphors in question. A closer
look will reveal that the Tewa metaphors are most closely related to
the Mesa Verde complex. To see this, (25) we first need to be aware
of the sound symbolism in initial vowels in this language (Harrington
1910:16). As these examples show, the front vowels "e" and
"a" indicate smaller scale, whereas the back vowels "o"
and "u" indicate larger scale. (26) So when this form has
a front vowel, its core meaning is "pottery vessel" and extended
meanings include fruit and the bottomland of a small canyon; and when
it has a back vowel, it indicates the bottomland of a large canyon,
a plaza, or a village. Thus, the multiple senses of this root have the
core meaning "pottery vessel" and extended meanings that map
this image onto the village and landscape.
(27) There are other terms in Tewa that map containers onto buildings
and the landscape. For example, the term for a pitched roof analyzes
as "basket of timbers," obviously mirroring the cribbed kiva
roof, and a term for the heavens analyzes as "blue cloud-flower
basket." Finally, the term for a passage to the underworld, which
occurs at lakes and springs, analyzes as "lake roof-hole."
This evidence proves that several specific metaphors in the Mesa Verde
complex were in use in a proto-Tewa speech community.
In contrast, there is very little evidence of the Mesa Verde complex
in Hopi. The only suggestive detail is that kiihu, the term for "house,"
can also mean "village." This suggests that proto-Hopi speakers
could conceptualize the community as a household, but that container
imagery was not part of their cognitive unconscious.
(28) There is more evidence of container metaphors in Keres and Zuni.
In Keres, the term for "medicine bowl" appears to analyze
as "pottery basket-bowl," and in Zuni, the term for a cooking
pot analyzes as "coiled pottery cooking basket." (29) Also,
in Keres, the term for "rainbow" also refers to a kiva ladder,
and the term which translates as "way-above-earth beam" is
applied to both the Milky Way and the kiva roof. Finally, in Zuni, terms
applied to the heavens and mythic places incorporate container imagery,
as you can from these examples. These data do suggest that speakers
of these languages linked baskets and pottery, and modeled the heavens
as buildings or containers. However, these metaphors do not mirror the
specific images of the Mesa Verde complex, such as the village as a
pottery vessel or the heavens as a textile. This makes a strong case
that the Mesa Verde complex did not originate among speakers of these
languages.
(30) This slide summarizes elements of the Mesa Verde metaphor complex
that are embedded in each language. The fact that Mesa Verde metaphors
are so deeply embedded and precisely reflected in Tewa makes a strong
case that the Mesa Verde complex was created by people who spoke a language
ancestral to Tewa. Additional data could probably determine whether
the complex is ancestral to other Tanoan languages as well. There is
obviously much more work to do, but I think even this brief example
is sufficient to show that direct conceptual links between languages
and archaeological complexes can be discovered using metaphor analysis.
My hope is that, using such methods, we might be able to establish links
between protolanguages and archaeological complexes that are secure
enough for true integration of historical linguistics and prehistoric
archaeology to proceed.
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