1.6: Outline of the Book

Having formulated the theme and methodological framework for the conference in late 2008 / early 2009, we were astounded by the scale and range of the responses we received to the call for papers — a testament to the interest and need to bridge the gap between philologically and archaeologically oriented studies of writing. Twenty-five papers in total were presented at the annual conference of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, held in May 2009. These were delivered by staff and graduate students from a range of museums and universities across the UK and from around the world, including the US, Europe and Australia.

A selection of these papers appear in this volume, exploring writing practices from the ancient past to more recent contexts, although there is a particular concentration on writing from the ancient Mediterranean region, and the Aegean in particular. This concentration reflects the responses to the original conference invitation and subsequent choices by both contributors and editors; interest in the materiality of writing is more developed in some fields than others. The diversity and asymmetry of temporal contexts and cultural areas represented may seem unconventional compared with conferences or publications for the traditional subject areas of textual or material cultural studies. Nevertheless, when mapping out a new research landscape differential engagement is to be expected — as methodological intersections between writing and material culture are identified and explored and new configurations which encourage fuller theorisation and sustained critical discourse are developed. Under these circumstances, which can be defined as a phase of ongoing epistemological reassessment, we feel that breadth should precede depth.

Fifteen² case studies set writing and related symbolic modes in relation to material practice including writing production, consumption and related performance and sensory experience. These studies critically explore traditional definitions and treatments of ‘writing’ to develop new perspectives and approaches that offer more holistic understandings of this evidence type. The volume also includes this Introduction and an Epilogue.

In spite of our emphasis on new perspectives and approaches, we have nevertheless organised the chapters in a somewhat conventional manner, generally following a geographical ordering with exceptions to allow for the treatment of subject matter according to chronological sequence. Starting with South and Meso-America, case studies shift to the Near Eastern heartland of writing and then return westwards to the Mediterranean, and on to Great Britain. We end with a methodological paper relating to the conservation of writing. This collection is not necessarily intended to be read in order, but rather dipped into at points of relevance, concern, and curiosity — hopefully prompting the reader to engage with less familiar evidence, and provoking consideration of analytical methods and interpretive frameworks that might be fruitfully adopted, adapted, or otherwise used to broaden the reader’s perspective.

Indeed, over the decades, explorations of the various facets of ‘written’ objects make clear that the question of what constitutes ‘writing’ in a given society must remain an open one if it is to be understood in the terms of its users, and need not be confined to notation systems that are related directly to spoken language. In his study of the khipus in Andean society, Frank Salomon looks at the functional implications of recording with fibre. He argues that khipus functioned not as fixed texts but as operational devices or simulators — visual models rather than verbal transcriptions. Whether this counts as writing is less important than recognising “graphical excellence” (Tufte 1983: 182) in one of its less familiar forms.

Sarah Jackson places similar emphasis on the importance of a context sensitive approach. Mayan image and text intersect and intertwine in profound ways and it is difficult if not ill-advised to attempt to separate them. In practice, writing may not be distinct from other symbolic modes, or may encompass multiple symbolic functions. Too rigid a definition may preclude identification of significant and meaningful relationships, hence the importance of taking account of this evidence type in terms of situated practice. Jackson interprets her examples of Mayan writing as an “orientational technology” that serves to locate people in culturally defined landscapes, especially socio-political landscapes that include both experiential and imagined aspects.

Roger Matthews discusses the earliest, and one of the longest-lasting, traditions of writing: the “cuneiform culture” of the ancient Near East. Initially developed as a system of writing on clay tablets and used mainly for accounting purposes, cuneiform also appears on many other media and was used for many different languages and a great variety of purposes. He shows how new research focussing on the materiality of cuneiform texts is addressing questions about the role(s) of writing in different Near Eastern societies.

Rachael Sparks considers how during the 2nd millennium bce the southern Levant became the meeting point for a number of different writing traditions, involving different languages and scripts, but also different materials, tools, and practices, as well as different contexts of use. She shows how this mixture of influences and practices allowed an unusual fluidity and experimentation with writing that led to the local development of alphabetic scripts.

Helène Whittaker investigates material practices associated with all the scripts of the Aegean Middle and Late Bronze Ages — Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B (c.2000–1200 bce) in the context of palace bureaucracies. While concentrating on the materials employed and the techniques used for writing, in addition to script and language, she also demonstrates the relationships between context, text-content and the forms of material expression employed in constructing wider social meaning.

Sarah Finlayson also examines the three main writing systems of the Bronze Age Aegean in terms of the relationships between writing and its material supports. She adopts the basic hypothesis that the shape of objects which bear writing derives from the use to which they, object + writing, are put and the shape changes as this purpose changes. Focussing particularly on Linear A, which appears on a diverse range of writing supports, she assesses whether the different materials and objects relate in an organised way to the different uses they were put to, e.g. clay tablets to administrative purposes and ‘libation tables’ to ritual use.

Georgia Flouda focusses on Minoan writing (therefore excluding Linear B) and considers how different forms of expression worked, examining features such as material, shape, mode and direction of writing, as well as archaeological context. She demonstrates different trajectories for Hieroglyphic (seals, tablets, and other types) and Linear A respectively. She draws heavily on semiotic theory especially the work of Peirce, suggesting, for instance, that the isolated ‘pictographic’ signs first appearing on the seals were understood as semasiographic codes.

Helena Tomas also considers Aegean Bronze Age writing, but concentrates on one specific phenomenon: the practice of cutting clay tablets (with a special emphasis on Linear B). A detailed study of the location of the cuts and the way they were carried out suggests two different motivations. Whereas the page-shaped tablets were probably cut in order to remove unnecessary clay (probably to keep tablet size to a minimum), elongated tablets may have been cut for the purpose of rearranging the information (for instance, a reclassification according to the origin of the people registered).

With particular emphasis on Greek-speaking and -writing areas, Alan Johnston examines the influence of different surfaces and the use of brush, pen and chisel on the appearance of text in the early centuries (c.800 to 300 bce) of alphabetic writing. In addition to writerly issues, aids for the reader such as the boustrophedon system and use of interpuncts are also considered for the tensions they exhibit between aesthetic concerns and practicality.

Whereas writing is often understood to be a system developed by elite members of society to consolidate authority, and fix social meanings and relationships, Kathryn Piquette explores late 4^th and early 3^rd millennium BCE evidence from Egypt which reveals the dynamic unfolding and reformulation of early writing and related imagery. Focusing on funerary labels of bone, ivory and wood, stone vessels and a stele, Piquette considers the implications of practices of unmaking, re-making, and incompletion.

Stephen Kidd considers a single document, a 3^rd-century BCE Greco-Egyptian letter inscribed on papyrus: a bilingual letter, written in Greek and Demotic. The second language is used specifically to detail a dream which the author, Ptolemaios, claims has to be described in Egyptian. The change of language also involved a change in script, associated with very different material practices. So the shift was informed not only by the languages as they were processed in the author’s brain, but also by the scripts themselves as they were experienced in the motions of his hands, the movement of his eyes, and the material objects he used to interact with these scripts.

Elisa Perego considers ‘Situla Art’, an elaborate figurative decorative style found mainly on bronze objects during the 7^th to 3^rd centuries BCE around the head of the Adriatic Sea. She adopts the concept of iconic literacy — the skill of producing and interpreting images — to study situla art and compare it to traditional textual literacy, which develops at approximately the same time in parts of the region. She argues that both inscribed objects and the products of situla art were employed to negotiate and promote the social role of high-ranking individuals. However, because true writing and situla art rarely occur on the same objects, she suggests that they were seen as alternative systems of communication, and that situla art, which was not restricted to the users of a single spoken language, could be understood over a wider geographical area.

Ruth Whitehouse’s chapter is also based on evidence from the north Italian Iron Age and looks specifically at tomb markers of different types and inscribed in two different languages, Etruscan and Venetic. In contrast to traditional studies concerned with languages and scripts, she concentrates on the different physical arrangements of the inscriptions on the stones and what these meant in terms of bodily movements and sensory engagements on the part of both the makers (‘writers’) and consumers (‘readers’) of the texts.

We then turn to Craig Cessford who examines 18^th and 19^th-century writing from the Grand Arcade site in Cambridge, England. He focusses on the ways in which material type, size, form and function of different kinds of artefact affect how writing was deployed. Cessford also considers why writing occurs incompletely or not at all on certain object types, highlighting a general yet critical issue for investigators of written culture — of accounting for absence alongside presence, and visibility as well as invisibility.

Elizabeth Pye draws our attention to the impact of the presence of writing, or the potential to reveal writing, on objects for decisions relating to conservation procedures and perceived values of objects. The common practice of prioritizing the revealing of writing may lead to adverse effects on the preservation of the writing supports — a problem that may be alleviated by modern techniques of digital imaging. However, digital imaging produces its own problems, as computer hardware and software themselves require conservation.

Finally, John Bennet brings the book to a close with an overview of writing and its ancient material expressions as covered in the chapters in this volume, while also reflecting on changing materialities and practices associated with modern emerging writing technologies.

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² In assembling these chapters from authors using both American and British spellings, we have decided to let each author follow either convention, while maintaining consistency within each chapter.