"Dark5Star" writes:
> This is an international list. Please respect the rights of all who
> participate.
Please clarify; what particular "rights" did Paul Belford actually infringe
upon by his (admittedly somewhat flippant) comments? Is this perhaps a US
usage of the word which we Brits are not yet aware of?

While any discussion in the Internet is by definition "international", it
seems to me that the vast majority of those who contribute regularly to this
list are for obvious reasons British and the main topic here is (supposed to
be) broadly-understood British archaeology, and the list is administered
through JISC by officers of the British Council of Archaeology, so I do not
see where a mention of "Americans" as a generalisation is in any way in
conflict with that (still less any infringement of "rights"). In the
interests of "internationalism", you'll be wanting us Britarchers to turn
back on the default "English(US)" setting of our Microsoft spell checkers
next !

With respect to the latter point, its worth looking at the horrifying book
by the linguist Andrew Dalby (2002) Language in Danger (London Penguin), who
predicts what many of us have suspected all along about the speed,  degree
and nature of language replacement in the modern world. While some of the
points he makes are rather 'forced', he makes a good overall case. He uses
the speed of language replacement in the Roman empire as a test case
(chapter 2) and suggests that the same processes of globalisation were
operating in the Roman period as today (or is it the other way around?).
This raises again the question of the relationship between language and
culture. I would be interested if anyone could direct us to any more recent
discussions of "globalism" in the Roman Empire (or rather parallels between
modern processes of globalism and 'romanisation').

Also I'd be interested in hearing of online critical reviews of Dalby's book
(a Google search at the moment reveals a handful of short book notes
apparently accepting his theses)

Paul Barford