C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (ed.). Archaeological thought in America. 357 pages, 35 illustrations. 1989. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press; ISBN 0-521-35452-8 hardback £35 & $39.50 Quotes

Although ceramics from the Andronovo cultures of the steppe have been found at Togolok 1 and 21, Kelleli, Taip, Gonur, and Takhirbai, Sarianidi (1998b:42; 1990:63) is adamant in opposing any significant Andronovo influence on the Bactrian Margiana complex: “Pottery of the Andronovo type does not exceed 100 fragments in all of southern Turkmenistan.” As rigorous approaches to data retrieval were not practiced, this figure must be merely impressionistic.

Reliance upon migrations as the principal agent of social change has been typical of Russian archaeological interpretations, along with a blurring of the distinction between ethnic, linguistic, racial, and cultural entities, the isolation of racial/ethnic groups by the craniometric methods of physical anthropology, and the use of linguistic paleontology to reconstruct the development of cultural groups.

Contemporary methodologies, linguistic or archaeological, for determining the spoken language of a remote archaeological culture are virtually nonexistent. Simplified notions of the congruence between an archaeological culture, an ethnic group, and a linguistic affiliation millennia before the existence of texts is mere speculation, often with a political agenda. Archaeology has a long way to go before its methodology allows one to establish which cultural markers, pottery, architecture, burials, etc., are the most reliable for designating ethnic identity.

In their environmental settings, subsistence economies, and material cultures, the Andronovo and the Bactrian Margiana complex could not be more different. Renfrew favors an Indo-Iranian identity for the Andronovo, and he fully realizes that there is not a shred of evidence that identifies the Andronovo with the traditional homeland of the Indo-Iranian-speakers either on the Iranian Plateau or in South Asia.

In the context of a renewed fashion of relating archaeology, culture, and language it is well to remember that neither sherds nor genes are destined to speak specific languages, nor does a given language require a specific ceramic type or genetic structure.