ABSTRACT
This chapter describes, in general terms, the aim of the discipline of linguistic archaeology: to reconstruct human language beyond the historical record. First, the chapter will discuss the concept of linguistic archaeology in relation to earlier definitions. Thereupon, it will briefly describe the main methodological distinctions made in this book, including the comparative, typological, and phylogenetic methods, and how they are used in approaches including archaeolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and the cultural evolutionary approach. Further, the chapter will focus on defining basic concepts for language reconstruction; these concepts include the application of general scientific methodologies, as well as important theoretical controversies and core concepts and models of the discipline. In addition, the chapter will relate language reconstruction to the general trends in linguistics in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
