The two basic components of Bronze Age administration are seals and script (Hallager 1996: 31), and a distinction can be made between recording documents, whose primary function is to accommodate writing, and sealed documents, which authenticate something by their seal impression (Schoep 2002a: 9). This functional division is reflected in the document forms, most clearly seen in the CH, LA and LB tablets, and CH bars, which are recording documents, shaped to carry quantities of written data. The sealed documents are more complex: the variety of shapes suggests that the form itself identifies a role in addition to that of authenticating (Schoep 2002a: 9). Where text appears on hanging sealings, the frequent absence of numerals, and occasionally ideograms, suggests these data are derived from the items to which the sealings are attached, creating, in effect, a larger document composed of object + sealing.
Clearly, for some of the sealed document forms, the loss of whatever they were associated with means our understanding of their use cannot, without speculation, extend much beyond inferring that they hung from or were affixed to something. Generally, the taphonomy of writing in the Aegean is problematic, as we depend on it being applied to materials that are preserved archaeologically; in the case of clay documents that were not deliberately fired, this means accidental preservation in a wider burnt context (Bennet 2008: 6). There is then an inevitable risk that, in an effort to make up for the gaps in the evidence, particularly with CH and LA where we cannot read the texts, we rely too heavily on aspects like differences in form, which might be a reflection of our own ‘etic’ analyses rather than of different ancient practices (Bennet 2005: 269). “Classer, c’est interpréter” (Godart and Olivier 1979: xxiv) is a crucial principle for understanding a large and complex database at the macro scale, but runs the risk of misrepresenting, at the micro scale, differences in form that result from regional peculiarities of use, or are a function of the way different individuals form and seal or inscribe each shape, as seems likely, for example, for some of the variation amongst LA single-hole hanging nodules (Krzyszkowska 2005: 159-160). Because the LB documents are relatively well understood, the temptation is, of course, to project their usage back onto those LA and CH documents with similar forms. This is one aspect of a broader tendency to retroject our models of the social, political and economic structures of the Mycenaean palaces onto the First and Second Palace Periods, which has rightly been challenged (Cherry 1984: 33; Schoep 2006: 38).
While these points must be borne in mind, it is nevertheless reasonable to suggest that the observable changes in document forms point to alterations in the methods of data gathering, processing and storing (Palaima 1984: 305). I would pick out two as particularly significant. The first is the bundle of changes in sealing practices between the First and Second Palace periods (i.e. between CH / limited LA use, and widespread LA use): direct object sealing is abandoned, suggesting, on the one hand, that the security of storerooms and their contents is managed differ- ently, in a less physical way (Weingarten 1990b: 107–108), and, on the other, that direct control of commodities, by means of attaching sealings to them, is replaced by more indirect methods of controlling commodity information with hanging nodules and tablets (Knappett 2001: 86, n. 26). Furthermore, writing, with one exception, no longer appears on seals themselves, but from this point on is incised or painted rather than formed by stamping (Bennet 2008: 9–10).
Secondly, the transition to LB sees a dramatic reduction in the number of different sealed documents, and an increase in the number and use of recording documents, with the development of ‘palm-leaf ’ tablets and labels for baskets (Palaima 1984: 305). The hierarchy of document forms suggests a more systematic approach to recording fuller and more specialised kinds of information than before, while at the same time the loss of the roundel, a document form key to LA administration, could point to a distancing from those to whom the administration issues goods (Bennet 2008: 18; Palaima 1984: 305).
What drives these changes is difficult to evaluate, not least because we assume that changes in sealing systems are necessarily tied to changes in writing systems (and possibly language; Bennet 2005: 270). Palaima’s suggestion that LA replaces CH because the latter script is inadequate to record increasingly complex economic activities (1990: 94) is a case in point, and this sort of utilitarian motivation underestimates the potential for writing to be used for ideological reasons. The transition from CH to LA, and from LA to LB, can arguably be seen as part of a deliberate construction of new identities, through the manipulation of knowledge resources or material culture, by elite groups, seeking to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, or exclude others from participating in political or economic life (Bennet 2008: 20; Schoep 2007: 59). Knappett’s observation that, in seeking to look through artefacts to see “the people behind them”, and their motivations or choices, there is a tendency for the objects themselves to be reduced to mere ciphers or emblems of human activity (Knappett 2008b: 122), is also pertinent here. He suggests that more attention be paid to the agency of artefacts, to the possibility that things can “take on a life of their own, entangling humans and pushing them along new, previously unrecognised paths” (Knappett 2008b: 122); while ascribing agency to objects is problematic (Morphy 2009: 6), Knappett is nevertheless right to stress the complexity of the relationship between artefacts and their users.
Finally, what does seem significant is a conceptual shift between CH / LA and LB administrations: the reduction of document shapes in LB suggests that writing now predominates over both the physical aspects of document forms (Schoep 1996–1997: 403), and the image, with signs superscribed over seal impressions, while in LA practice impressions are generally kept clear (Palaima 1990: 96). Furthermore, CH is “messy” (Younger and Rehak 2008: 174), and LA tablets generally poorly organised, unstandardised, and sometimes too large or small for their text (Schoep 2002a: 73), suggesting that the text and its support are considered to be separate entities, yet both contributing information to the overall message. In contrast, the LB tablets, with their neat, standardised layouts, and text which usually fits the tablet well, seem to be conceived of as a unit, with text and support integrated into a coherent and well-defined document. Form may ever follow function, but these changes bespeak a fundamentally different view on the part of those creating and consuming writing in the Bronze Age Aegean of how writing and its support ought to interact.
