About the Book
This volume gathers papers from the first conference ever to be held on the disappearance of writing systems, 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 by a different writing system - is of almost equal significance to invention as a mark of radical change. Probably more writing systems have disappeared than survived in the last five thousand years. Case studies from the Old and New Worlds are presented, ranging over periods from the first millennium BC to the present. In order to address many types of transmission, the broadest possible definition of 'writing' is used, notably including Mexican pictography and the Andean khipu system. One chapter discusses the larger proportion of known human societies which have not possessed complex material codes like writing, offering an alternative perspective on the long-term transmission of socially salient subjects.
There is a concluding essay that draws out common themes and offers an initial synthesis of results. The volume offers a new perspective on approaches to writing that will be significant for the understanding of writing systems and their social functions, literacy, memory, and high-cultural communication systems in general.
Table of Contents:
1. John Bennet, Now You See It; Now You Don't! The Disappearance of the Linear A Script on Crete 2. J. David Hawkins, The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Hieroglyphic Luwian 3. Jeremy Black A , The Obsolescence and Demise of Cuneiform Writing in Elam 4. David Brown, Increasingly Redundant: The Growing Obsolescence of the Cuneiform Script in Babylonia from 539 BC Postscript: Jerrold Cooper, Redundancy Reconsidered: Reflections on David Brown's Thesis 5. Kathryn Lomas (Institute of Classical Studies, University College London), Script Obsolescence in Ancient Italy: From Pre-Roman to Roman Writing 6. Richard Salomon (University of Washington), Whatever Happened to Kharohi? The Fate of a Forgotten Indic Script 7. Martin Andreas Stadler (University of Wurzburg), On the Demise of Egyptian Writing: Working with a Problematic Source Basis 8. Claude Rilly (CNRS, France), The Last Traces of Meroitic? A Tentative Scenario for the Disappearance of the Meroitic Script 9. M. C. A. Macdonald (Institute of Oriental Studies, Oxford), The Phoenix of Phoinikcia: Alphabetic Reincarnation in Arabia 10. Stephen D. Houston, The Small Deaths of Maya Writing 11. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Tulane University), The Death of Mexican Pictography 12. Frank Salomon (University of Wisconsin), Late Khipu Use 13. Giovanni Stary, Disappearance of Writing Systems: The Manchu Case 14. John Monaghan (University of Illinois), Revelatory Scripts, 'the Unlettered Genius', and the Appearance and Disappearance of Writing 15. Chris Gosden (Institute of Archaeology, Oxford), History without Text 16. John Baines, Writing and its Multiple Disappearances.
About the Author :
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 Archaeology at Brown University. The founding co-editor of Ancient Mesoamerica, he is also co-editor of a dozen technical monographs on archaeological work in Guatemala, and author or editor of twelve books, the most recent of which is The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (with David Stuart and Karl Taube, 2006).
Review :
The editors can be congratulated for their efforts that yielded a most valuable and highly informative overview of a largely neglected field of writing system research.
Martin Neef, TU Braunschweig, Written Language and Literacy
It is a pioneering, fascinating and authoritative book. The 17 contributors cover a surprising range of topics in detail and with comprehensive bibliographies. ...A landmark collection of articles by scholars.
Andrew Robinson, Wolfson College, Cambridge, in Nature
While the book is heavily slanted towards Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern systems, which make up the bulk of the case studies, we are, nevertheless, provided with a battery of instructive and impressive discussions of the decline of scripts. Important and indispensible contributions to the still-fledgling study of writing and can be highly recommended to all.
Gordon Whittaker, Universität Göttingen, in Antiquity
Each essay is informative and stimulating; the whole collection presents studies that should stimulate further research into a comprehensive analysis into the factors involved in the disappearance of writing systems. Baines and his colleagues deserve gratitude for this significant volume.
American Journal of Archaeology
This is a fascinating book. It is not a final definitive treatment, but a pioneering first step, and a guide to the considerable opportunities for research, both on these writing systems and others which could not be included in this volume. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for the success with which they have opened the discussion and pointed the way to others.
C.W. Shelmerdine, University of Texas, in Cambridge Archaeological Journal
