Archaeolinguistics and the languages of hunter-gatherers

Abstract This chapter surveys the particular problems posed by the languages of hunter-gatherer groups, particularly where all languages in a family are spoken by hunter-gatherers, for the archaeolinguistic enterprise. After surveying the problematics of ‘hunter-gatherers’ as a term, the distinctive features of lexicon and grammar of hunter-gatherer languages, then passes to what lexical ‘hooks’ are available nonetheless for studies in the Wörter und Sachen tradition, and on to some case studies of how social and cosmological features of hunter-gatherer societies have been reconstructed. Notwithstanding the special difficulties that such languages and their families present for the archaeolinguistic enterprise, they are vital if we are to understand the vast majority of human prehistory, since for more than 95–99% of human history (depending on our heritage) our ancestors lived and spoke as hunter-gatherers.