One way of tracing the historical track of an object is through the derivation of the word that designates it as is done in investigating the origins of place-names, so called toponyms. Thus in researching the toponymy of say Spain, or France for that matter, one could determine the extent of the Basque-speaking territory in the 11th century. It's a type of archeology with words but totally dependent on the existence of sufficient texts and other manuscripts to follow a word's evolution. The French word béret seems to derive from the Béarnais word berret. This language belongs to a larger yet closely related group of Romance languages which linguists used to call "langue d'oc" from an area roughly corresponding to the territories south of the Loire river in what today is France. This word is a direct descendant of the Latin word birrus which was the name for a short brown hooded cape popular in all levels of Roman society. It seems that Roman troops in the Val d'Aspe (valley) inspired local shepherds with this garment who in turn needed protective clothing to shield themselves against the elements of nature, theirs being a profession that required constant roaming about the terrain over long distances following their herds in pursuit of fresh pastures. The foothills of the Pyrenees were once settled by the invading Iberians who seemed to have pushed the Celts further north. However, they soon became romanized under the administrative and military pressure of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless the word seems to have followed this path of evolution: (Latin) birrus, (its diminutive) birrettum, (Provençal) birret in the realm of langue d'oc or berret in the Béarnais variant of this language in which the double r is rolled and the t at the end of the word is pronounced.
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