Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis.

This book emerged from a conference of scholars from three different disciplines (archaeology, genetics, and comparative linguistics) that was convened by the book’s coeditors. A total of 36 papers written by 43 delegates were circulated before final drafts were prepared, and all the papers focused on the farming/language dispersal hypothesis (FLDH)—namely, that the distributions of some language families resulted from expansions of farming practices from their points of origin. Bellwood introduced the term “triangulation” to refer to the simultaneous focus of evidence from all three disciplines on the hypothesis. The book’s 36 chapters are organized into three parts, the first of which consists of only two chapters—each written by one of the book’s coeditors—that introduce the rationale and assumptions underlying the FLDH.