Writing as Material Practice: Substance, surface and medium

Writing as Material Practice: Substance, surface and medium

Kathryn E. Piquette, Ruth D. Whitehouse (eds.) 

Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities. The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices.

License

This is an Open Access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).

Chapters

• Introduction: Developing an approach to writing as material practice

  Kathryn E. Piquette & Ruth D. Whitehouse

• The Twisting Paths of Recall: Khipu (Andean cord notation) as artifact

  Frank Salomon

• Writing as Material Technology: Orientation within landscapes of the Classic Maya world

  Sarah E. Jackson

• Writing (and Reading) as Material Practice: The world of cuneiform culture as an arena for investigation

  Roger Matthews

• Re-writing the Script: Decoding the textual experience in the Bronze Age Levant (c.2000–1150 BC)

  Rachael Thyrza Sparks

• The Function and Meaning of Writing in the Prehistoric Aegean: Some reflections on the social and symbolic significance of writing from a material perspective

  Helène Whittaker

• Form Follows Function: Writing and its supports in the Aegean Bronze Age

  Sarah Finlayson

• Materiality of Minoan Writing: Modes of display and perception

  Georgia Flouda

• Saving on Clay: The Linear B practice of cutting tablets

  Helena Tomas

• Straight, Crooked and Joined-up Writing: An early Mediterranean view

  Alan Johnston

• “It Is Written”?: Making, remaking and unmaking early ‘writing’ in the lower Nile Valley

  Kathryn E. Piquette

• Written Greek but Drawn Egyptian: Script changes in a bilingual dream papyrus

  Stephen Kidd

• The Other Writing: Iconic literacy and Situla Art in pre-Roman Veneto (Italy)

  Elisa Perego

• ‘Tombstones’ in the North Italian Iron Age: Careless writers or athletic readers?

  Ruth D. Whitehouse

• Different Times, Different Materials and Different Purposes: Writing on objects at the Grand Arcade site in Cambridge

  Craig Cessford

• Writing Conservation: The impact of text on conservation decisions and practice

  Elizabeth Pye

• Epilogue

  John Bennet