R Blench
Biographic Data
| ID | 13361 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Blench |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Blench |
| SIGNATURE | BLENCH R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Williamson College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8495-6410 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Colin Renfrew: A note on his interests outside archaeology
Reconstructing the history of Berber [Amazigh] music
Reconstructing the history of Berber [Amazigh] music
The paper is a preliminary attempt to reconstruct core musical features of Berber music. The Berber languages form a closely related set which spread across North Africa from East to West perhaps 3000 years ago. Their music has much and in common and some of the instruments played as well as the pentatonic scale seem to derive from the Nile Valley. The paper reviews features of musical structures and instruments, concluding that the influence of …
(De)classifying Arunachal Languages: Reconsidering the Evidence
Linguistic and archaeological evidence for Berber prehistory
Linguistic and archaeological evidence for Berber prehistory
The Berber languages are relatively well-studied, and it is possible to explore their geographical extent today and in the past, and also reconstruct basic and cultural vocabulary which can be attributed to speakers of proto-Berber. However, there is a major problem reconciling this with textual and archaeological evidence. The proto-Berber we can reconstruct seems to be far too recent to match what we know from other evidence; indeed it seems to…
The peopling of the Canaries by the Berbers: New data and new hypotheses
The peopling of the Canaries by the Berbers: New data and new hypotheses
Although the Canary Archipelago was known to classical authors, the date and manner of its peopling remains highly controversial. Remarkably, when the first maritime explorations from the Mediterranean reach the islands, they were still in the Neolithic. Despite extensive evidence for contact, metal technology was never transferred. Even more remarkably, the inhabitants, the Guanche, had no seagoing tradition, despite the evidence for inter-islan…
Relating linguistic reconstructions of plant names in Berber to the archaeobotany of North Africa
Morphological Evidence for the Coherence of East Sudanic
East Sudanic is the largest and most complex branch of Nilo-Saharan. First mooted by Greenberg in 1950, who included seven branches, it was expanded in his 1963 publication to include Ama (Nyimang) and Temein and also Kuliak, not now considered part of East Sudanic. However, demonstrating the coherence of East Sudanic and justifying an internal structure for it have remained problematic. The only signicant monograph on this topic is Bender’s The …
The Linguistic Prehistory of the Sahara
The expansion of languages such as Hassaniya and Tuareg are demonstrably recent and a prior history is there to be uncovered.
Histoire et voyages des plantes cultivées à Madagascar
Philippe Beaujard has written extensively on Madagascar and published a substantial dictionary of a specific Malagasy language, Tanala, as well as a two-volume history of Indian Ocean trade and int
Reconceptualising the palaeozoogeography of the Sahara and the dispersal of early modern humans
Genetic and archaeological lines of evidence both suggest that Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa sometime between 130 and 50 ka, and that a likely route was across the ‘green Sahara’. However, there is an absence of definitive evidence for trans-Sahara dispersal even though some animal species appear to have done so. To further our understanding of this dispersal, we present a model that considers the different ways humans can affect animal di…
Tarok young people’s speech
The paper describes the distinctive lexical and grammatical inventory of young people in Tarok, a Plateau language of East-Central Nigeria. Typical features are manipulation of the existing lexicon through both shortening and syllable insertion, conservation of archaic pronunciation, idiosyncratic sound shifts, arbitrary pronoun substitution, tonal changes, neutralization of noun class plurals, and sound shift in particles
Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agricultural history
Finger millet: The Contribution of Vernacular Names Towards Its Prehistory
The origins of nominal classification markers in MSEA languages: Convergence, contact and some African parallels
Ịzọn verbal extensions
Systems of verbal extension, consisting of affixes that alter argument structure, are widely reported in the world, and are scattered throughout Africa, where they compete with strategies such as serial verbs and auxiliaries, plus verbal collocations. The Ijoid languages can have suffixed verbal extensions, but these are constructed out of very limited segmental material. There is an example of what seems to be a composite extension, but Ijoid do…
Using Diverse Sources of Evidence for Reconstructing the Past History of Musical Exchanges in the Indian Ocean
Methods and results in the reconstruction of music history in Africa and a case study of instrumental polyphony
The reconstruction of the prehistory of African musical instruments and musical structures has barely begun, despite the importance of music in African culture in the present. This paper reviews the sources of information for the prehistory and history of music in Sub-Saharan Africa with examples from direct finds, iconography and textual sources. Due to the richness of its material, and the fact only some of it is relevant to other parts of the …
Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of North East Indian languages
Sino-Tibetan has more speakers than any other language phylum, and covers a major proportion of the land area of East Asia. Despite some two centuries of study and publication, the subclassification of Sino-Tibetan remains highly controversial, as does its external affiliation (van Driem 2008a; Blench 2008a,b; Handel 2008). Originating as 'Indo-Chinese' in the middle of the nineteenth century, it originally carried racial connotations (van Driem …
Two Vanished African Maritime Traditions and a Parallel from South America
Was there an Austroasiatic Presence in Island Southeast Asia prior to the Austronesian Expansion
No Austroasiatic languages are spoken in island SE Asia today, although we know from the Chamic languages of Vietnam and the SA Huynh culture that contact was extensive between the mainland and the islands. However, the diversity of Neolithic materials in various island sites has led some archaeologists to question the Austronesian ‘Neolithic package’ model, without advancing a positive alternative. This paper suggests that Austroasiatic speakers…
Bananas and Plantains in Africa: Re-interpreting the linguistic evidence
Phytolith evidence for early domesticated bananas in Cameroun supports a conclusion reached previously from a combination of botanical and linguistic evidence, namely that plantains reached West Africa, presumably from Southeast Asia, at an early period. Botanical evidence suggests that the plantains (AAB) are the most credible early domesticates and that their African center of diversity is in the zone from southeastern Nigeria to Gabon. The mec…
The Languages of the Tasmanians and Their Relation to the Peopling of Australia: Sensible and Wild Theories
The languages of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania became extinct in the late nineteenth century and only very fragmentary records remain. What is known about the languages and the conclusions of mainstream linguists are briefly described. As a consequence of the difficulties in interpreting this material, hypotheses concerning the classification of the languages have been the focus of a variety of theories linked to the peopling of Tasmania, so…
The Expansion and Adaptation of Fulbe Pastoralism to Subhumid and Humid Conditions in Nigeria
R. Blench - L'expansion et l'adaptation du pastoralisme peul aux conditions climatiques humides et subhumides du Nigeria. Les Peuls, dont la population est la plus dispersée des peuples pasteurs du Nigeria, ont une organisation sociale très fragmentée et diversifiée. Le stéréotype, selon lequel les Peuls exploiteraient les zones semi-arides du Nord du Nigeria et n'utiliseraient la région de la Middle Belt que comme un refuge pour le pâturage de s…
Two Vanished African Maritime Traditions and a Parallel from South America
New palaeozoogeographical evidence for the settlement of Madagascar
The island of Madagascar split from the African mainland some 50 million years ago, considerably prior to the evolution of humans and indeed primates. Its isolation permitted the evolution of a complex endemic flora and a fauna dominated by lemurs, whose nearest relatives are the lorises and galagos on the African and Asian mainland. Some 35% of the flora and 90% of the fauna are endemic, occurring nowhere else in the world. The absence of human …
Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agricultural history
Finger millet: The Contribution of Vernacular Names Towards Its Prehistory
Using Diverse Sources of Evidence for Reconstructing the Past History of Musical Exchanges in the Indian Ocean
Tarok young people’s speech
The paper describes the distinctive lexical and grammatical inventory of young people in Tarok, a Plateau language of East-Central Nigeria. Typical features are manipulation of the existing lexicon through both shortening and syllable insertion, conservation of archaic pronunciation, idiosyncratic sound shifts, arbitrary pronoun substitution, tonal changes, neutralization of noun class plurals, and sound shift in particles
Was there an Austroasiatic Presence in Island Southeast Asia prior to the Austronesian Expansion
No Austroasiatic languages are spoken in island SE Asia today, although we know from the Chamic languages of Vietnam and the SA Huynh culture that contact was extensive between the mainland and the islands. However, the diversity of Neolithic materials in various island sites has led some archaeologists to question the Austronesian ‘Neolithic package’ model, without advancing a positive alternative. This paper suggests that Austroasiatic speakers…
Linguistic evidence for cultivated plants in the Bantu borderland
Recent research into the languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland has made possible the elaboration of a more concrete schema relating Bantu and Bantoid languages to the Benue-Congo group. At the same time, new data sources on the vernacular names and ethnobotany of cultivated plants suggest hypotheses on the gradual domestication of indigenous flora. The pattern that emerges suggests that this process occurred gradually in widely scattered l…
Idoma musical instruments
The Idoma are a cluster of peoples inhabiting a vertical strip of southern Central Nigeria, to the north and south of Oturkpo town (Armstrong, 1955a and Hansford et al. 1976). Their population was estimated at a quarter of a million in 1955, but has probably increased substantially since that time. †̃Idomoidâ€TM is one of the principal branches of South Central Niger Congo and forms a co-ordinate branch with the Nupe languages. Abraham (1967) was…
The Evolution of the Cultigen Repertoire of the Nupe of West-Central Nigeria
(1989). The Evolution of the Cultigen Repertoire of the Nupe of West-Central Nigeria. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 51-63
Linguistic evidence for cultivated plants in the Bantu borderland
Recent research into the languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland has made possible the elaboration of a more concrete schema relating Bantu and Bantoid languages to the Benue-Congo group. At the same time, new data sources on the vernacular names and ethnobotany of cultivated plants suggest hypotheses on the gradual domestication of indigenous flora. The pattern that emerges suggests that this process occurred gradually in widely scattered l…
The Expansion and Adaptation of Fulbe Pastoralism to Subhumid and Humid Conditions in Nigeria
R. Blench - L'expansion et l'adaptation du pastoralisme peul aux conditions climatiques humides et subhumides du Nigeria. Les Peuls, dont la population est la plus dispersée des peuples pasteurs du Nigeria, ont une organisation sociale très fragmentée et diversifiée. Le stéréotype, selon lequel les Peuls exploiteraient les zones semi-arides du Nord du Nigeria et n'utiliseraient la région de la Middle Belt que comme un refuge pour le pâturage de s…
Language phyla of the Indo-Pacific region: Recent research and classification
Clarinet
From the mountains to the valleys: Understanding ethnolinguistic geography in Southeast Asia
The worldwide distribution of ethnolinguistic diversity is highly uneven and concentrated in particular regions; sub-Saharan Africa from Nigeria to Chad, Melanesia, much of the New World and Southeast Asia. Although the question is frequently posed as if explaining such diversity was the problem, it is better reformulated in terms of models to explain uniformity. The underlying pattern is diversity, but ethnic homogeneity has developed in particu…
From Vietnamese Lithophones to Balinese Gamelans: A History of Tuned Percussion in the Indo-Pacific Region
Southeast Asia and adjacent regions are part of a general area defined musically by ensembles of tuned percussion instruments played in a heterophonic style. It has been argued that there is some link between African and Southeast Asian xylophones, but this is almost certainly erroneous. Tuned percussion instruments are bounded by India in the west, Laos in the North and China in the east, spreading down into island Indonesia but stopping short o…
New palaeozoogeographical evidence for the settlement of Madagascar
The island of Madagascar split from the African mainland some 50 million years ago, considerably prior to the evolution of humans and indeed primates. Its isolation permitted the evolution of a complex endemic flora and a fauna dominated by lemurs, whose nearest relatives are the lorises and galagos on the African and Asian mainland. Some 35% of the flora and 90% of the fauna are endemic, occurring nowhere else in the world. The absence of human …
The Languages of the Tasmanians and Their Relation to the Peopling of Australia: Sensible and Wild Theories
The languages of the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania became extinct in the late nineteenth century and only very fragmentary records remain. What is known about the languages and the conclusions of mainstream linguists are briefly described. As a consequence of the difficulties in interpreting this material, hypotheses concerning the classification of the languages have been the focus of a variety of theories linked to the peopling of Tasmania, so…
[Archaeology in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania] Fruits and Arboriculture in the Indo-Pacific Region
Bananas and Plantains in Africa: Re-interpreting the linguistic evidence
Phytolith evidence for early domesticated bananas in Cameroun supports a conclusion reached previously from a combination of botanical and linguistic evidence, namely that plantains reached West Africa, presumably from Southeast Asia, at an early period. Botanical evidence suggests that the plantains (AAB) are the most credible early domesticates and that their African center of diversity is in the zone from southeastern Nigeria to Gabon. The mec…
Was there an Austroasiatic Presence in Island Southeast Asia prior to the Austronesian Expansion
No Austroasiatic languages are spoken in island SE Asia today, although we know from the Chamic languages of Vietnam and the SA Huynh culture that contact was extensive between the mainland and the islands. However, the diversity of Neolithic materials in various island sites has led some archaeologists to question the Austronesian ‘Neolithic package’ model, without advancing a positive alternative. This paper suggests that Austroasiatic speakers…
Two Vanished African Maritime Traditions and a Parallel from South America
Methods and results in the reconstruction of music history in Africa and a case study of instrumental polyphony
The reconstruction of the prehistory of African musical instruments and musical structures has barely begun, despite the importance of music in African culture in the present. This paper reviews the sources of information for the prehistory and history of music in Sub-Saharan Africa with examples from direct finds, iconography and textual sources. Due to the richness of its material, and the fact only some of it is relevant to other parts of the …
Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of North East Indian languages
Sino-Tibetan has more speakers than any other language phylum, and covers a major proportion of the land area of East Asia. Despite some two centuries of study and publication, the subclassification of Sino-Tibetan remains highly controversial, as does its external affiliation (van Driem 2008a; Blench 2008a,b; Handel 2008). Originating as 'Indo-Chinese' in the middle of the nineteenth century, it originally carried racial connotations (van Driem …
Using Diverse Sources of Evidence for Reconstructing the Past History of Musical Exchanges in the Indian Ocean
The origins of nominal classification markers in MSEA languages: Convergence, contact and some African parallels
Ịzọn verbal extensions
Systems of verbal extension, consisting of affixes that alter argument structure, are widely reported in the world, and are scattered throughout Africa, where they compete with strategies such as serial verbs and auxiliaries, plus verbal collocations. The Ijoid languages can have suffixed verbal extensions, but these are constructed out of very limited segmental material. There is an example of what seems to be a composite extension, but Ijoid do…
Tarok young people’s speech
The paper describes the distinctive lexical and grammatical inventory of young people in Tarok, a Plateau language of East-Central Nigeria. Typical features are manipulation of the existing lexicon through both shortening and syllable insertion, conservation of archaic pronunciation, idiosyncratic sound shifts, arbitrary pronoun substitution, tonal changes, neutralization of noun class plurals, and sound shift in particles
Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agricultural history
Finger millet: The Contribution of Vernacular Names Towards Its Prehistory
Reconceptualising the palaeozoogeography of the Sahara and the dispersal of early modern humans
Genetic and archaeological lines of evidence both suggest that Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa sometime between 130 and 50 ka, and that a likely route was across the ‘green Sahara’. However, there is an absence of definitive evidence for trans-Sahara dispersal even though some animal species appear to have done so. To further our understanding of this dispersal, we present a model that considers the different ways humans can affect animal di…
Histoire et voyages des plantes cultivées à Madagascar
Philippe Beaujard has written extensively on Madagascar and published a substantial dictionary of a specific Malagasy language, Tanala, as well as a two-volume history of Indian Ocean trade and int
The Linguistic Prehistory of the Sahara
The expansion of languages such as Hassaniya and Tuareg are demonstrably recent and a prior history is there to be uncovered.
Geography (22 works) · History (19 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · Archaeology (16 works) · Biology (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · History (10 works) · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis (10 works) · Art (7 works) · Ethnology (7 works)