This book examines the historical linguistic panorama of Western South America, focusing on the minor languages that were partially or fully replaced by the expansion of the Quechuan family through the region.

The author presents a coherent and generally applicable framework for studying prehistoric language shift processes and reconstructing earlier linguistic landscapes before significant language spreads ousted former patterns of linguistic diversity. This framework combines toponymic evidence with the analysis of substrate contact effects, and, in some cases, extralinguistic evidence, to create an integrated if incomplete of extinct and undocumented languages. In an authoritative exploration of case studies, concerning Aymara in parts of Southern Peru, Cañar in Ecuador, and Chacha in Northern Peru, the book shows how the identities of lost languages and earlier linguistic panoramas can be reconstructed.

Matthias Urban is principal investigator of the Junior Research Group The language dynamics of the ancient Central Andes, hosted by the University of Tübingen and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)s Emmy Noether Programme. Having held prior appointments at the universities of Leiden, Marburg, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, his research interests include historical linguistics, in particular of the Andes, language contact, and linguistic typology.

1. Linguistic stratigraphy, or how to recover traces of lost languages.- 2. The Central Andean linguistic landscape through time and the Quechuan language family.- 3. Evidence and methods for investigating substratal languages.- 4. The Aymara presence in Southern Peru.- 5. The Barbacoan languages and the southern Ecuadorian highlands.- 6. Chachapoyas.- 7. Synopsis and conclusion.