Abstract
The investigation of geographic names against a background of archaeological knowledge is an important field of inter-disciplinary research. The toponymic systems of the past and their remnants, as preserved in historical written sources, inform us about many aspects of the life of former human communities within their respective environments; in particular, (i) the language, social system and economy of initial settlers, (ii) the transfer of information about the landscape and economic resources between human groups in periods of language- and cultural contact, (iii) the meaning of a given landscape for its inhabitants.
Linguistic findings pertaining to these aspects can contribute greatly to archaeological research. We would like to bring together such interdisciplinary research approaches from various parts of the world.
Thus, we welcome papers on the issues of colonization of unfamiliar landscapes, settlement expansion and the phenomenology of landscape and language contact, especially if they combine archaeological and linguistic sources.