Abstract
The aim of this presentation is to introduce the research project called Interlinking language and material culture - a study of European populations in time and space (currently in progress, principal investigator Nicolas Jansen) which consists in combining the material evidence archaeology) and language preserved in place names. The target areas are language contact zones on the outer reaches of Slavic settlement in Germany, in Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein, where the Slavic settlements were absorbed by German/ic peoples and the use of Slavic language ceased by the 12th century.
This presentation focuses on the third area, Finnic/Slavic language contact zone in the north-eastern Baltic Rim (i. e. northwestern Russia) which underwent the opposite process, the Finnic languages being substituted by Slavic, however the evidence of the Finnic languages and settlement is still to be found in place names. The research is primarily (but not entirely) based on quantitative approach which (with the help of geospatial analysis and statistical methods) should show the correlations in the data between sites associated with the place names of Finnic origin and concentrations of archaeological evidence (burial sites).
Qualitative approach is applied on the level of preparing the linguistic data (i.e. the analysis and tagging the place names). The presentation also describes the early stages of research into Finnic and Slavic settlement and language contacts in northwestern Russia and explanation of the criteria applied for choosing the actual area of interest (based on the archeological evidence and toponyms containing elements of Finnic language/s) which has been narrowed down to Volkhovski Rajon (south of Lage Ladoga, Leningrad District).