The RoE summer school takes a wide perspective on the origins, possible homeland and subsequent migrations into Europe of the Indo-European peoples by fusing the disciplines of historical linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics. We also look at the other populations that already inhabited or migrated into Europe at the time.
Despite two centuries of intensive research within both archaeology and historical linguistics, interdisciplinary collaborations are still rare, which sometimes leads to startlingly incorrect assumptions about the state of the art in the “other disciplines”. With the emergence of population genetics, however, anthropologists and archaeologists have come closer than ever to positing reliable hypotheses that can and should be compared to the findings of historical linguistics. It is of course only by combining our disciplines that we can ever approach an answer to the most central question in Indo-European studies.
The mission of the RoE summer school is to bridge the gaps among the disciplines by inviting a broad international and interdisciplinary panel of lecturers. The course offers introductory modules into linguistics, archaeology and population genetics, thus enabling students to engage in more in-depth and specific modules that deal with the Indo-European question from a linguistic, archaeological and genetic perspective.