Measurements of dynamic Young’s modulus, E and damping as a function of temperature, T, were made for alumina and silicon carbide. The Young’s modulus data were compared with some from the literature, and analysed in terms of a theoretical framework relating the Debye temperature, theta(D), with the elastic constants. For both materials this analysis yielded a ratio T-0/theta(D) which was near 0.4, where T-0 is an empirical fitting constant for the plot of (E(0) - E)/T versus 1/T (E(0) is the value of E at 0 K). The analysis of the damping data in terms of an Arrhenius type dependence led to effective activation energies near kT, where k is Boltzmann’s constant.