Lusitanian language

After a brief overview of YDNA, I describe and analyze the information about the R-Y17224 branch collected from members who have so far done NGS testing. I advance some ideas about the origins and history of the branch and suggest a connection with the Lusitanian tribes. Further samples, especially of ancient DNA, might support or invalidate the ideas proposed in the article.

This book is a recent overview of the most important aspects of what we currently know about the ancient languages and epigraphic materials of the Iberian Peninsula and Southern France. These languages and texts received the denomination of ‘Palaeohispanic’ a few years ago and the name seems to have been generally accepted. The book, written by some of the most active and respected researchers in the field, is a collection of 14 essays covering all the regions as well as all the pertinent questions of the current state of our knowledge.

This work deals with a number of in my view misinterpreted names found on inscriptions from Emona in Central Slovenia. While many of them have been recently attributed to an Indo-European, otherwise unknown dialect, I will try to show that contact linguistics and Celtic dialectology are instrumental in their correct analysis, and that they all can be classified as either Eastern Gaulish or Italic. An in-depth analysis of their phonetics and morphology, including some novel readings of a number of Pannonian inscriptions, reveal that they are they are often the product of scribal misunderstandings or lack of experience. They also bear witness to the impact of late Venetic migrations to synchronically Celtic-speaking urban nuclei.

The rock-cut epigraphy of Roman times is generally a source of exceptional data, but it often raises interpretive problems that invariably stem from the state of conservation of the rock surfaces or the more or less wheezing character of the contents.
The present study presents a rock inscription located in the Serra do Caramulo (Vouzela, Viseu, Portugal) that has been subject to considerable interpretative oscillations and whose re-study allowed its full reading and interpretation as votive.
The discussion of results is an opportunity to critically record the investigation that the inscription has raised over a century and to present some observations about its significance, paying attention to the selection of the support, its landscape insertion and written content.

Key words: Rock epigraphy – Religiosity - indigenous deity - Lusitanian - Roman Period - Northern Lusitania


A epigrafia rupestre de época romana é geralmente fonte de informação excecional, mas suscita amiúde problemas interpretativos que invariavelmente decorrem do estado de conservação dos suportes rochosos ou do caráter mais ou menos sibilino dos conteúdos.
No presente artigo é estudada uma inscrição rupestre localizada na serra do Caramulo (Vouzela, Viseu, Portugal) que tem estado sujeita a consideráveis oscilações interpretativas e cujo reestudo permitiu a sua cabal leitura e interpretação como votiva.
A apresentação de resultados é ensejo para historiar criticamente a investigação que a inscrição suscitou ao longo de um século e expor algumas observações sobre o seu significado, atentando na seleção do suporte, na sua inserção paisagística e conteúdo escrito.

Palavras-chave: Epigrafia rupestre – religiosidade – deidade indígena – Lusitano – época romana – Lusitânia setentrional.

Historiography of the Lusitanians from Antiquity and the Renaissance, in which they were mythologized by their harsh opposition to Rome, up to the present. The contributions of archeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of linguistics from the mid-twentieth century and of ethnoarchaeology in recent years, have specified its territory, its material culture, its language, its divinities and its customs, as well
as its long process of ethnogenesis from the Bronze Age until Rome creates the Provincia Lusitania, c. 15 BC.
The Lusitanians were an Indo-European people who inhabited the western areas of the Iberian Peninsula from the Miño to the Guadiana river. These territories constituted a Finis terrae in Antiquity, reason why the Lusitanians offer a process of longue durée that explains its Indo-European “proto-celtic” character, with a social structure, a language and a religion peculiar by its archaism, which situates them between Celts and Italics.

This work, “José M. Vallejo, Onomástica paleohispánica: Antroponimia y Teonimia. Parte I: testimonios epigráficos latinos, celtibéricos y lusitanos, y referencias literarias, University of the Basque Country, 2016 (551 pp.)” belongs to Hesperia project (database of Palaeohispanic languages) and collects the onomastic material directly related to the Iberian peninsula in antiquity (an on-line version is available at http://hesperia.ucm.es/consulta_hesperia/onomastica/acceso_onomastica.php). Specifically, it compiles personal and divinity names which have come down to us both in epigraphic documents (Celtiberian and Lusitanian), and in an indirect transmission, as texts written in Latin or Greek. As the title explains, in this first part, we have gathered up:
-indigenous personal names in Latin epigraphy in Hispania.
-literary personal names transmitted by Latin and Greek sources.
-personal names of Hispanic people found abroad.
-indigenous personal names in Celtiberian and Lusitanian inscriptions.
We have not included sure or probable personal names in Iberian inscriptions in indigenous script (although they are available in the on-line version).
Finally we also gather up:
-indigenous divinity names in both Latin or local epigraphy.

This paper highlights the relevance of Lusitanian religious inscriptions as sources to help us reconstruct the local language of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula. Religious texts are the only epigraphic genre for which Lusitanian language was used. This linguistic choice could be understood in terms of linguistic retention for ritual reasons and / or because of the identification "community-language-religion", which is a well-documented phenomenon that generates mixed inscriptions with code-switching Latin-Lusitanian and Lusitanian inscriptions, not only in Lusitania (which is where the majority of the texts come from), but also in other regions of the Western Roman Empire.

Resumo: A identificação de uma antiga transcrição inédita de "Arroyo I" permite apresentar uma mais apurada fixação deste texto. Considerando outros dados, pode afirmar-se a sua independência relativamente a "Arroyo II"; e apontar a sua original implantação perto do povoado proto-histórico romanizado de Sansueña, cercanias de Arroyo de la Luz. Propõe-se ainda uma nova interpretação da epígrafe, perseguindo um resultado admissível do ponto de vista filológico e coerente sob uma perspectiva histórica. Conclui-se ser este um enunciado tipo lex sacra, prescrevendo publicamente e de forma intemporal os actos preliminares e os ritos deambulatórios de uma lustratio, texto equiparável a vários exemplos itálicos comparativamente analisados.

The Lusitanian text of Cabeço das Fráguas follows an evident and clearly intentional symmetry between the two series of declared elements: the animal offerings and the receiving deities. Assuming the theonyms to be in the dative case, the traditional interpretation of this epigraph called for the existence of singular dat. in -a of the first declension in this linguistic context. But this axiom was based on fragile evidences and was refuted by Untermann and others who, however, offered alternatives that lacked solidity themselves. An attempted compromise by the author of the present paper later proved to be likewise erroneous. Now, reviewing the internal features of the text and the specificities of the sanctuary, a radically different proposition is presented, approaching the epigraph of Fráguas as an invocatio and considering the theonyms to be necessarily written, without exception, in the vocative case.

Abstract: This paper reflects on some linguistic constraints in the etymological analysis of personal names of Western Hispania. To be exact, any of the anthroponimical roots referring to numerals (tritio-, turio-, pentio-) cannot be assigned to a specific Indo-European family. And provided that it is the geographical distribution what helps to place them from a linguistic point of view, we propose that Linguistics should make the most of the importance of the Linguistic Geography, based on the coherent repetition of series of elements, in order to analyze the ancient material of Roman Hispania.

the original form underlying all variants of this masculine divine name is *bandu-, itself an -u-stem from IE *gw(e)m-tu- 'causeway' and thus comparable to the Latin god Ianus. It has undergone labialization of the original labiovelar and voicing of a dental stop in the vicinity of a nasal, and is probably non-Celtic. This semantic interpretation is underpinned by the well known patera of Calzadilla, where the divinity is shown open-legged, straddling on both sides of a broken bridge, under which water is flowing.

the aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages of Hispania during Antiquity. The Latin alphabet was used to record texts in other languages: Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian in the Iberian Peninsula. The use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages represents a step before complete Latinisation.

This paper analyses the association between sacrifice, meat consumption and religion in the west of the Iberian Peninsula from the Late Bronze Age to Romanisation. Figurative bronzes and Lusitanian epigraphy depict a type of combinatorial sacrifice in which the animals are offered to different divinities. It is hypothesised that the roots of these rituals, which are similar to the Roman suovetaurilia and other eastern Indo-European sacrifices, may be found in the Bronze Age.

This paper highlights the relevance of Lusitanian religious inscriptions as sources to help us reconstruct the local language of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula. Religious texts are the only epigraphic genre for which Lusitanian language was used. This linguistic choice could be understood in terms of linguistic retention for ritual reasons and / or because of the identification "community-language-religion", which is a well-documented phenomenon that generates mixed inscriptions with code-switching Latin-Lusitanian and Lusitanian inscriptions, not only in Lusitania (which is where the majority of the texts come from), but also in other regions of the Western Roman Empire.

This article outlines an evolution of the preserved testimonies
of the Lusitanian language, whether these direct (texts) or indirect (onomastic), from the 3rd century BC up to the 5th century AD. The immediate conclusion to be drawn is that the period in which indigenous texts were written covers little time (1st century BC to 2nd AD); despite this, it seems that Lusitanian came to be maintained when other indigenous languages of the peninsula had already disappeared, as the onomastic testimonies point out.

The Lusitanian hydronym Limaia has been translated into both Classical languages as ‘the River of Oblivion’ (Greek L»qh, Latin Oblivio, -onis). This semantics is supported by many ancient sources (e.g. by Livy, Pliny, Florus, Salustius, Silius Italicus, Strabo and so on), thus both Latin and Greek names represent the so called translational calques. It is possible that the word *limaiā (or a similar form) was a Lusitanian name for ‘oblivion, forgetfulness’, derived from the Indo-European root *ghleim- ‘to forget’, cf. ON. gleyma, Icel. gleyma, Dan. glemme, Swed. glömma ‘to forget’. However, the Lusitanian hydronym Limaia (Gk. Lima…a, Lat. Limaea) cannot be separated from the name of an Old Prussian lake *Limaiō, attested as early as in the fourteenth century AD (1362 inter hos lacum videlicet Lymaio; 1364 et versus lacum Lyma, 1386 inter lacus Lymaio). Both these water-names originate from IE. *leim- ‘to flood, inundate’, see Bret. liñva vb. ‘to flood, inundate, drown’, Welsh llif m. ‘flow, flood’, MBret. livat ‘flood’, Corn. lyf ‘flood, inundation’ (< Celt. *līmos), Toch. A lyam, B lyäm ‘lake’ (< *limen-), Alb. lumë, lumenj m. ‘river’ (< *limen-), Greek lim»n m. ‘harbour, haven, creek’, orig. ‘bay’, l…mnh f. ‘a pool of standing water; a marshy lake, mere; a large pool or basin’. The author believes that reflexes of the two different Indo-European roots *leim- ‘to flood’ and *ghleim- ‘to forget’ became conflated in Lusitanian. Thus the Lusitanian „flood-river” Limaia became „the River of Oblivion” as a result of folk etymology.