Tracing the medieval expansion of the Amuric language family through linguistics and archaeology

Amuric (also known as Nivkh) is a language family found in the Lower Amur Basin and on Sakhalin Island. While geography suggests that the roots of Amuric lie in the Lower Amur region, the early history of the family is largely unknown. In the archaeological literature, the Nivkh are often associated with the Okhotsk culture, which spread from Sakhalin to occupy northern Hokkaido in the early medieval era (ca. AD 500–1000), implying that the Okhotsk people spoke an Amuric language. However, this hypothesis has received little attention from historical linguists and has yet to be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective. Here, we first compare the trajectories of expansion of the Amuric language family and the Okhotsk culture and show that they overlap chronologically. Linguistic influences from Amuric into Ainuic analysed here suggest that the former language was once present on Hokkaido prior to the expansion of Ainuic across Hokkaido and into Sakhalin in the early second millennium AD. The second part of the paper analyses possible causes of Amuric dispersals. Although previous research has suggested that climate change was an important driver of the early medieval expansion of Amuric, we develop a broader analysis that includes agriculture, state power and trade. While our study is consistent with earlier conclusions that Amuric originated in the Amur Basin, linking Amuric with the Okhotsk culture extends the accepted time depth of the Amuric family by several centuries.