Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean
Practices and Adaptations
Published on 15. August 2022
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-78925-850-9 (ISBN)
Description
Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes - from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas.
This volume brings together contributions by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. Their focus is on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.
This volume brings together contributions by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. Their focus is on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.
Reviews / Votes
[T]his volume, as a contribution to the research output of the CREWS project, encapsulates how the research of the CREWS core team and wider family has revolved around questions of the contexts and relatedness of writing systems and traditions * New Testament Abstracts *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 169 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
848 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78925-850-9 (9781789258509)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Steele Philippa M. Steele | Boyes Philip J. Boyes
Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean
Practices and Adaptations
E-Book
10/2022
Oxbow Books
€36.99
Available for download
Persons
Philippa M. Steele is the Director of the CREWS Project, a Senior Research Associate at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Research Fellow of Magdalene College. She has previously been awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Evans Pritchard Lectureship at All Souls College, Oxford, followed by a European Research Council grant to run the CREWS Project, and has published widely on ancient languages and writing systems with a particular focus on Cyprus and the Aegean. Philip Boyes is a research associate at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. As part of the CREWS Project, he works on the social context of writing at Late Bronze Age Ugarit. He has previously worked on the archaeology of the East Mediterranean and Levant in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.
Content
Approaches to writing in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East
Philippa M. Steele
Relations between script, writing material and layout: the case of the Anatolian Hieroglyphs
Willemijn Waal
Word division in Sicilian inscriptions
Robert Crellin
What is an Alphabet good for?
Csaba La'da
Measuring particularity and similarity in archaic Greek alphabets with NLP
Natalia Elvira Astoreca
Borrowing, invention, remodelling: Observations on the rare letters of the Phrygian alphabet and the problem of formation of Anatolian alphabets
Rostislav Oreshko
Cypro-Minoan and its potmarks and vessel inscriptions as challenges to Aegean Scripts corpora
Cassandra Donnelly
Ductus in Cypro-Minoan writing. Definition, purpose and distribution of stroke types
Martina Polig
The introduction of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus, a case study in material culture
Beatrice Pestarino
The death of alphabets at the end of the Bronze Age. How does the Deir 'Alla alphabet fit the picture?
Michel de Vreeze
Early Egyptian writing from the perspective of the embodied practitioner
Kathryn Piquette
The magic of writing
Philip J. Boyes
Philippa M. Steele
Relations between script, writing material and layout: the case of the Anatolian Hieroglyphs
Willemijn Waal
Word division in Sicilian inscriptions
Robert Crellin
What is an Alphabet good for?
Csaba La'da
Measuring particularity and similarity in archaic Greek alphabets with NLP
Natalia Elvira Astoreca
Borrowing, invention, remodelling: Observations on the rare letters of the Phrygian alphabet and the problem of formation of Anatolian alphabets
Rostislav Oreshko
Cypro-Minoan and its potmarks and vessel inscriptions as challenges to Aegean Scripts corpora
Cassandra Donnelly
Ductus in Cypro-Minoan writing. Definition, purpose and distribution of stroke types
Martina Polig
The introduction of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus, a case study in material culture
Beatrice Pestarino
The death of alphabets at the end of the Bronze Age. How does the Deir 'Alla alphabet fit the picture?
Michel de Vreeze
Early Egyptian writing from the perspective of the embodied practitioner
Kathryn Piquette
The magic of writing
Philip J. Boyes