LCES 2017
| LCES 2017 | |
|---|---|
Language Contact and the Early Slavs
| |
| Dates | 2017/10/19 (iCal) - 2017/10/21 |
| Location | |
| Location: | Prague, Czechia |
| Important dates | |
| Submissions: | 2017/05/31 |
| Table of Contents | |
- Workshop Chair
- Tomáš Klír, Institute for Archeology, Charles University
The workshop is addressed to one of the most controversial issues in contemporary medieval studies, which is the very fast expansion of the Slavic language across great parts of Europe in the Early Middle Ages. While traditional scenarios assume unity of language, ethnicity and material culture, leading alternative models emphasize the active role of material culture, through which ethnic identity was constructed to mobilize linguistically extremely heterogeneous populations. Traditionalists explain the spread of the Proto-Slavic language by migrations in the 6th–7th century and associate that with specific material culture and with early mentions of ethnic Slavs in written sources. Alternative hypotheses attribute the same material culture and written references to linguistically and genetically quite varied communities and associate the later spread of Proto-Slavic with its status as an ‘official’ language or ‘koiné’. In other words, early ethnic Slavs did not speak Proto-Slavic, no Slavic ‘Urheimat’ ever existed and Slavic speakers may not have common roots.