John D. Bengtson is a historical and anthropological linguist. He is past president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and has served as editor of the journal Mother Tongue. His areas of specialization include Scandinavian languages and linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Dené–Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) languages, and paleolinguistics (the study of human prehistory through linguistic evidence).