Center for the Human Past
Seminars
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Hunter-gatherer ancestry in Zambian BaTwa populations – Genetics, archaeology and discussion of results with study participants
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Hunter-gatherer ancestry in Zambian BaTwa populations – Genetics, archaeology and discussion of results with study participantsAbstract Sub-equatorial Africa is today inhabited predominantly by Bantu-speaking groups of Western African descent, whose ancestors, in many cases, replaced, displaced, or assimilated local hunter-gatherer groups. In eastern Zambia, there is evidence of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists from circa 2000 years ago. Little is known about the genetic affinities of the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the area before…
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Talks of the Past open seminar: From Phonology to Phylogeny: Inferring Language Trees from Cognate Word Forms
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Read more →: Talks of the Past open seminar: From Phonology to Phylogeny: Inferring Language Trees from Cognate Word FormsAbstract Linguistic phylogenies are commonly inferred from abstract cognate classifications that encode relationships among lexemes. Although widespread, this practice has well-recognised limitations: it discards phylogenetic signal contained in segmental word forms, restricts the range of evolutionary questions that can be addressed, and treats cognacy judgments, which are hypotheses in their own right, as observed data.…
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Higher Seminar in Baltic Studies, Stockholm University, with Anthony Jakob
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Read more →: Higher Seminar in Baltic Studies, Stockholm University, with Anthony JakobThe Higher Seminar in Baltic Languages with Signe Rirdance (SU) and Anthony Jakob (SCAS). The seminar is split into two sessions (with a coffee break in between): 14:00-15:30 – Signe Rirdance (SU): “Deciphering Getzel’s hand in early Latvian: AI and I” 16:00-17:30 – Anthony Jakob (SCAS): “Linguistic ghosts and zombies in modern Standard Lithuanian” Language:…
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Mini-Seminar: Models, data, and their limits: What can we know about the deep history of language families? with Philipp Rönchen
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Read more →: Mini-Seminar: Models, data, and their limits: What can we know about the deep history of language families? with Philipp RönchenAbstract Computational methods are increasingly used to reconstruct the deep history of language families, yet different models often produce strikingly different answers. This reflects a general challenge in the historical sciences: we must draw conclusions from fragmentary data shaped by complex processes that cannot be directly observed or experimentally repeated. In this talk, I summarise…
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Mini-Seminar: Using the dog to date Torricelli languages with linguistic paleontology, with Erik Elgh
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Read more →: Mini-Seminar: Using the dog to date Torricelli languages with linguistic paleontology, with Erik ElghAbstract The earliest archaeological dog remains in Melanesia found to date are from Babase Island, New Ireland, and are associated with the Early Lapita layers on the site, thus dating from ca. 3300-3000 BP (Summerhayes et al. 2019, see Manne et al. 2020 for an overview of dog remains in the area). The formation of…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe 5000 Years Ago, speaker Volker Heyd
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe 5000 Years Ago, speaker Volker HeydAbstract This lecture examines the westward migration of Yamnaya populations from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into southeastern Europe around 3100–3000 BCE, reaching as far as the Tisza region in present-day Hungary. Archaeological evidence, particularly distinctive kurgan burials with standardised funerary practices, marks their presence across regions such as Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Despite the apparent…
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SCAS seminar with David Goldstein – A New Approach to the Diversification of Ancient Greek
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Read more →: SCAS seminar with David Goldstein – A New Approach to the Diversification of Ancient GreekABSTRACT The diversification of the ancient Greek dialects has long posed a major challenge for Greek linguistics. Core questions—how the dialects are related, when they diverged, and how they were distributed in the second millennium BCE—remain the subject of sustained debate, in part because of the limits of traditional methods of historical inference. Over the…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social Identity
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Cultural Creolization in Ostrobothnia, Finland: An Interdisciplinary View on Burials, Exchange, and Social IdentityAbstract This talk explores a remarkable Iron Age burial from Pukkila in western Finland, dating to around AD 700, where a cremated individual was laid to rest in a boat alongside weapons, ritual objects, and artefacts from across Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and the north. Rather than fitting neatly into a single cultural or ethnic category,…
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Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Talking about food in prehistory: Linguistic evidence for dietary practices in Indo-European, speaker Julia Sturm
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Read more →: Talks of the Past Open Seminar: Talking about food in prehistory: Linguistic evidence for dietary practices in Indo-European, speaker Julia SturmAbstract What did prehistoric peoples eat? This question can be approached through various scholarly disciplines, including historical linguistics. More specifically, historical linguistics methodologies are tools for addressing the question of what ancient peoples discussed when they spoke about food, including sourcing, preparing, consuming, and sacrificing it. This talk will examine linguistic evidence for the shared…
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Human Past Interdisciplinary Retreat
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Read more →: Human Past Interdisciplinary RetreatThe main goal of the retreat is to strengthen collaboration between different disciplines and to learn about each other’s research through presentations and discussions. We hope this retreat will lay a solid foundation for future joint interdisciplinary projects and scientific publications. The day plan includes short(-ish) talks, primarily by junior researchers and PhD students, as…
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SCAS seminar with Hugo Reyes Centeno: Genomic and Archaeological Insights on the Expansion of Austronesian Speakers into Island Southeast Asia
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Read more →: SCAS seminar with Hugo Reyes Centeno: Genomic and Archaeological Insights on the Expansion of Austronesian Speakers into Island Southeast AsiaSwedish Collegium for Advanced Study seminars