You got my curiosity up and found the V5 and V6 source code (I did not have V4 easy to get, where I am today) ;-)

A big clue of it being C will be having crt0.s (below) in the first few bytes of the disassembled code.  We see the a.out header (i.e. start at offset 20 for the code) and look what's there.  I'm going to guess that is at 046 is the address of _main, from the call instruction at address 034. The Trap 1 is a sys exit @ address 044.
But .. the V6 crt0.s source has a call to _exit, which is lacking in the binary below.   So it means that the binary was not created with the C runtime and probably not the v6 C compiler in the sources.  So I took a peak at the V6 crt0.s and guess what -- it matches! 

So, I'm going to guess the binary was compiled and linked with an earlier compiler.  Ao ... if I had to guess, the programs are similar, but possibly different.   

% more wump.das
;
; pdp11dasm version 0.0.3
; disassembly of wump
;
000000: 000407                  br      20                      ; ..
;
000002: 005334                  dec     @(r4)+                  ; \.
000004: 004524                  jsr     r5,(r4)+                ; T.
000006: 002312                  bge     37777777634             ; J.
000010: 000000                  halt                            ; ..
000012: 000000                  halt                            ; ..
000014: 000000                  halt                            ; ..
;
000016: 000001                  wait                            ; ..
000020: 170011                  setd                            ; .p
000022: 010600                  mov     r6,r0                   ; ..
000024: 011046                  mov     (r0),-(r6)              ; &.
000026: 005720                  tst     (r0)+                   ; P.
000030: 010066 000002           mov     r0,2(r6)                ; 6...
000034: 004767 000006           call    46                      ; w...
000040: 022626                  cmp     (r6)+,(r6)+             ; .%
000042: 005000                  clr     r0                      ; ..
000044: 104401                  trap    1                       ; ..
000046: 004567 005174           jsr     r5,5246                 ; w.|.
000052: 005746                  tst     -(r6)                   ; f.
000054: 012716 011230           mov     #11230,(r6)             ; N...
000060: 004737 002776           call    @#2776                  ; _.~.
000064: 004767 002262           call    2352                    ; w.2.
000070: 022700 000171           cmp     #171,r0                 ; @%y.
000074: 001027                  bne     154                     ; ..
000076: 005004                  clr     r4                      ; ..
000100: 010400                  mov     r4,r0                   ; ..
000102: 006300                  asl     r0                      ; @.
000104: 005760 005334           tst     5334(r0)                ; p.\.
000110: 001421                  beq     154                     ; ..
000112: 032704 000001           bit     #1,r4                   ; D5..
000116: 001403                  beq     126                     ; ..
000120: 012716 000024           mov     #24,(r6)                ; N...
000124: 000402                  br      132                     ; ..
;
000126: 012716 000003           mov     #3,(r6)                 ; N...
000132: 010400                  mov     r4,r0                   ; ..
000134: 006300                  asl     r0                      ; @.
000136: 016046 005334           mov     5334(r0),-(r6)          ; &.\.
000142: 004737 002776           call    @#2776                  ; _.~.






V6: s4/crt0.s:
/ C runtime startoff

.globl  savr5
.globl  _exit

.globl  _main

start:
        setd
        mov     sp,r0
        mov     (r0),-(sp)
        tst     (r0)+
        mov     r0,2(sp)
        jsr     pc,_main
        mov     r0,(sp)
        jsr     pc,*$_exit
        sys     exit

.bss
savr5:  .=.+2


V5: s4/crt0.s:
/ C runtime startoff

.globl  savr5

.globl  _main

start:
        setd
        mov     sp,r0
        mov     (r0),-(sp)
        tst     (r0)+
        mov     r0,2(sp)
        jsr     pc,_main
        cmp     (sp)+,(sp)+
        clr     r0
        sys     exit

.bss
savr5:  .=.+2


On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:48 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:


On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 11:38 AM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/6/20 12:29 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
The good news is that disassembly will tell you right away if it was written in C or not.


OK. I give up. How?

Generally, the C compiler generates code that's quite distinctive (at least PCC does, not sure about Dennis' compiler). People writing free assembler tend to do really weird things for function entry / return.

And it will likely tell you if it's some weird wrapper around another binary, though that wasn't too common at bell labs.

Warner