Iran and the Caucasus 17 (2013) 295-320  Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/1573384X-20130305 Historische und areale Aspekte der Bodenschatz- Terminologie in den ostkaukasischen Sprachen Wolfgang Schulze Universität München Abstract The present paper discusses the historical background of selected terms in the world of East Caucasian languages that are related to the domain of metallurgy (copper, iron, tin, plumb, gold, and silver) augmented by terms for ‘coal’ and ‘salt’. A closer inspection of these terms shows that none of them can be reconstructed for Proto-East Caucasian. Ra- ther, we have to deal either with terms that have been coined in the intermediate proto- languages (Nakh, Avar-Andian, Tsezian, Lezgian, Lak, Dargwa, and Khinalug) or with more or less recent loans stemming mainly from the Iranian and Turkic languages. The absence of reconstructable terms for the items under review suggests that the speakers of the East Caucasian proto-language had not been involved expressively in metallurgic traditions (as opposed to farming traditions). Tentatively, these speakers can thus be associated with the early farming culture within the complex of the Kuro-Araxes Culture. Only after the proto- language disintegrated due to the migration of most of its speakers in the Dagestan and the regions of Chechnya, some societies related to these intermediate proto-languages must have been involved more expressively in metallurgic traditions. The more recent loans, e.g. for copper, gold, and silver, stemming from Iranian (Persian) and Turkic (Kumyk and Azeri) illustrate a shift in conceptualising these objects: They were now in- terpreted as artifacts (rather than as natural resources) that were associated with the cul- tures of the dominant ‘Oriental’ societies. The paper can be seen as a preliminary study concerning the areal distribution of lexical patterns in the Eastern Caucasus from a his- torical perspective. Keywords East Caucasian, Caucasian Prehistory, Metallurgic Terms, Historical Areal Linguistics, Cul- tural Borrowings 1. VORBEMERKUNGEN Die Tradition der Kognitiven Linguistik bemüht sich zunehmend, im Kon- text einer cultural linguistics die konzeptuelle Geschichte sprachlicher Ausdrücke aufzudecken und zu systematisieren. Dabei gerät eine Per- UNCORRECTED PROOFS