Individual agents are frequently evident in early writing and notational systems, yet these systems have rarely been subjected to the concept of agency as it is traceable in archeology. Agency in Ancient Writing addresses this oversight, allowing archeologists to identify and discuss real, observable actors and actions in the archaeological record. Embracing myriad ways in which agency can be interpreted, ancient writing systems from Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, China, and Greece are examined from a textual perspective as both archaeological objects and nascent historical documents. This allows for distinction among intentions, consequences, meanings, and motivations, increasing understanding and aiding interpretation of the subjectivity of social actors. Chapters focusing on acts of writing and public recitation overlap with those addressing the materiality of texts, interweaving archaeology, epigraphy, and the study of visual symbol systems. Agency in Ancient Writing leads to a more thorough and meaningful discussion of agency as an archaeological concept and will be of interest to anyone interested in ancient texts, including archaeologists, historians, linguists, epigraphers, and art historians, as well as scholars studying agency and structuration theory.

This anthology translates and discusses texts authored by women of ancient Mesopotamia.

Ancient writing systems employ logographic and logophonetic principles playing on the relationship between writing, script and scribal learning. The workshop proceedings published in this volume explore the way these relationships encode knowledge and meaning reflected in the social, historical and cultural mentality of the early peoples of East Asia (China and Japan), Anatolia, the Aegean, Egypt and Mesoamerica. The meeting was organized in the FU Berlin on the fall of 2010 by the editor and Dr. Renata Landgrafova (now Charles University, Prague) in the frame of the DFG research training group 1458 "Notational Iconicity" ("Schriftbildlichkeit") headed by Prof. Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and Prof. Sybille Kramer. The premise of our meeting was that script and the organization of texts can reveal how knowledge is transformed and transmitted among different social groups across time and space, and eventually standardized as written tradition. Its multidisciplinary approach follows recent trends in the attempt to arouse debate between scholars of disparate systems of writing - be it Cuneiform, Hieroglyphic or Linear in nature - and to discuss their elements independent of origin or cultural context. A broad perspective on ancient writing and its visual elements was established with the contributions delving into the aspects of generating knowledge and meaning (J. Janak, M. Weeden), categorizing knowledge (E. Boot, T. W. Kwan, H. Tomas), diffusion and transformation of knowledge (Sh. Gordin, R. Landgrafova) and rationalizing knowledge (E. Birk).

Writing is not just a set of systems for transcribing language and communicating meaning, but an important element of human practice, deeply embedded in the cultures where it is present and fundamentally interconnected with all other aspects of human life. The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices explores these relationships in a number of different cultural contexts and from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeological, anthropological and linguistic. It offers new ways of approaching the study of writing and integrating it into wider debates and discussions about culture, history and archaeology.

This book focuses on the material practice of ancient literacy through a contextual examination of Roman writing equipment.

This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.

This book builds on earlier projects about the origins and extinctions of script traditions throughout the world in an effort to address the fundamental questions of how and why writing systems change. The contributors--who study ancient scripts from Arabic to Roman, from Bronze Age China to Middle Kingdom Egypt--utilize an approach that views writing less as a technology than as a mode of communication, one that is socially learned and culturally transmitted.