1.3: Writing

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Contributors to this volume address the subject of ‘writing’ in a broad sense, including written-text and signs taken to represent units of language as well as marking systems that are less clearly related to spoken language, although the former dominate. Ontologically writing is treated as both a process and an outcome; authors distinguish the act of writing from the result of that action to explore how aspects of production and consumption actively constitute written meanings. The notion of meaning as unfolding in particular times and places, as part of a socially-situated chaîne opératoire, challenges the conventional epistemological role often assigned to writing as a source about the past (Moreland 2006: 137–138, 143). Papers thus focus on writing as an integral part of cultural practice and demonstrate that this data type not only augments archaeological reconstruction of the past, but can fruitfully be studied as material culture and as an active constituent of the past — just as it continues to be so profoundly in the present (below).