Ehret Christopher. History and the Testimony of Language

University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2011. — 289 p.This book is about history and the practical power of language to reveal historical change. Christopher Ehret offers a methodological guide to applying language evidence in historical studies. He demonstrates how these methods allow us not only to recover the histories of time periods and places poorly served by written documentation, but also to enrich our understanding of well-documented regions and eras. A leading historian as well as historical linguist of Africa, Ehret provides in-depth examples from the language phyla of Africa, arguing that his comprehensive treatment can be applied by linguistically trained historians and historical linguists working with any language and in any area of the world.Evidence and Method
Methods and Myths
Writing History from Linguistic Evidence
Historical Inference from Transformations in the Vocabularies of Culture
Historical Inference from Word Borrowing
Linguistic Dating
Applications
History in the Sahara: Society and Economy in the Early Holocene
Social Transformation in the Horn of Africa, 500 BCE to 500 CE
Recovering the History of Extinct Societies: A Case Study from East Africa
Cultural Diffusion in the Atlantic Age: American Crops in Eastern Africa