ABSTRACT
For some time now there have been indications that a new synthesis is emerging between the disciplines of historical linguistics, prehistoric archaeology and molecular genetics (Renfrew 1991:20). But there are many potential pitfalls in seeking to relate these disciplines, and the history of misunderstandings between linguistics and archaeology offers many cautionary tales. In particular, the notional correspondence between linguistic change and linguistic phylogeny on the one hand, and the development of genetic diversity among human populations on the other (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988, Figure 6.1) is, I think, in part an illusory one. For as I shall argue here, the correspondences arise more from a significant number of dispersal episodes in post-Pleistocene human history (in which influential demographic processes were involved, where linguistic and genetic replacement were indeed correlated) than from str ictly comparable processes of linguistic and genetic evolution or equivalent rates of linguistic and genetic divergence.
