The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication

by Baines, John; Bennet, John; Houston, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781845539078
• ISBN10: 1845539079
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-15
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

This volume gathers papers from the first ever conference on the disappearance of writing systems, held in Oxford in March 2004. While the invention and decipherment of writing systems have long been focuses of research, their eclipse or replacement have been little studied. Because writing is so important in many cultures and civilizations, its disappearance - followed by a period without it or by replacement with a different writing system - is of almost equal significance to invention as a mark of radical change. Probably more writing systems have disappeared than have survived in the last five thousand years.

Author Biography

John Baines is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. His publications include Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (2007) and High Culture and Experience in Ancient Egypt (in preparation for Equinox). John Bennet is Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. His research interests include the archaeology of complex societies, writing and administrative systems (especially Linear B), and diachronic landscape archaeology. Stephen Houston, a specialist in Maya civilization, is Dupee Family Professor of Social Science and Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. A MacArthur Fellow, he is also co-editor of a dozen monographs on archaeological work in Guatemala, and author or editor of many books, the most recent of which is Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea (with Daniel Finamore, 2010).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
List of Tables	p. xii
Notes on Contributors	p. xiii
Preface	p. xvii
Now You See It; Now You Don't! The Disappearance of the Linear A Script on Crete	p. 1
The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Hieroglyphic Luwian	p. 31
The Obsolescence and Demise of Cuneiform Writing in Elam	p. 45
Increasingly Redundant: The Growing Obsolescence of the Cuneiform Script in Babylonia from 539 BC	p. 73
Postscript. Redundancy Reconsidered: Reflections on David Brown's Thesis	p. 103
Script Obsolescence in Ancient Italy: From Pre-Roman to Roman Writing	p. 109
Whatever Happened to Kharosthi? The Fate of a Forgotten Indic Script	p. 139
On the Demise of Egyptian Writing: Working with a Problematic Source Basis	p. 157
The Last Traces of Meroitic? A Tentative Scenario for the Disappearance of the Meroitic Script	p. 183
The Phoenix of Phoinikeia: Alphabetic Reincarnation in Arabia	p. 207
The Small Deaths of Maya Writing	p. 231
The Death of Mexican Pictography	p. 253
Late Khipu Use	p. 285
Disappearance of Writing Systems: The Manchu Case	p. 311
Revelatory Scripts, 'the Unlettered Genius', and the Appearance and Disappearance of Writing	p. 323
History without Text	p. 335
Writing and its Multiple Disappearances	p. 347
Index	p. 365
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