The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts

The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts PDF Author: Marilina Betrò
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111360806
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Written artefacts are traditionally studied because of their content. Material aspects of these artefacts enrich the study of ancient history in many ways. Eleven case studies in five sections on the ancient world, including the Near East, Egypt, the Mediterranean, China and India, demonstrate the impact of a holistic approach that considers materiality and content alike. Following an introductory sketch of relevant research, the first section, 'Methodological Considerations', critically examines the limitations the evidence available imposes on our understanding. 'Early Uses of Writing' addresses material and spatial aspects of inscriptions, and their communicative functions over the textual ones. The third section, 'Material Features', deals with clay, wooden and papyrus manuscripts and demonstrates the importance of an integrated approach. The contributions to 'Co-presence of Written Artefacts' take into account that written artefacts come in clusters. The final section, 'Cultural Encounters', presents studies on the interactions between social strata and ethnic groups, challenging previous ideas. The volume contributes to the comparative study of written artefacts in ancient history, stimulating cross-disciplinary and -cultural research.

The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts

The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts PDF Author: Marilina Betrò
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111360806
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book Here

Book Description
Written artefacts are traditionally studied because of their content. Material aspects of these artefacts enrich the study of ancient history in many ways. Eleven case studies in five sections on the ancient world, including the Near East, Egypt, the Mediterranean, China and India, demonstrate the impact of a holistic approach that considers materiality and content alike. Following an introductory sketch of relevant research, the first section, 'Methodological Considerations', critically examines the limitations the evidence available imposes on our understanding. 'Early Uses of Writing' addresses material and spatial aspects of inscriptions, and their communicative functions over the textual ones. The third section, 'Material Features', deals with clay, wooden and papyrus manuscripts and demonstrates the importance of an integrated approach. The contributions to 'Co-presence of Written Artefacts' take into account that written artefacts come in clusters. The final section, 'Cultural Encounters', presents studies on the interactions between social strata and ethnic groups, challenging previous ideas. The volume contributes to the comparative study of written artefacts in ancient history, stimulating cross-disciplinary and -cultural research.

Writing from Invention to Decipherment

Writing from Invention to Decipherment PDF Author: Silvia Ferrara
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198908768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Writing from Invention to Decipherment contains a wealth of global scholarship on ancient writing systems from China, Mesopotamia, Central America, and the Mediterranean, to more recent newly created scripts such as the Rongorongo from Easter Island, the Caroline Island scripts, as well as the alphabet. The aim is to dig into the foundations of writing, showcasing the complexities and varieties of scripts, from their invention to the potential decipherment of poorly understood scripts. The volume offers state-of-the-art research on undeciphered scripts from the Aegean (as for example, Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A) or not completely deciphered (as for example Maya) scripts. From a methodological perspective, these contributions lay out how and why writing was invented, who used it, and to what ends. Here writing is presented as a multi-modal cultural phenomenon, that intersects and transcends neat discipline boundaries, within an inclusive approach bridging archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and cognitive studies.

Talking Images

Talking Images PDF Author: Silvia Ferrara
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104011413X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This innovative collection offers a holistic portrait of the multimodal communication potential of images from the Upper Paleolithic through to today, showcasing image-based creativity throughout the centuries. The volume seeks to extend the boundaries of our understanding of what language and writing can do to show how language can be understood as part of broader codes, as well as how images and figural objects can contribute to meaning-making in communication. The book is divided into four parts, each exploring a different dimension of the interplay between representation, symbolic meaning, and perception in the study of images, drawing on case studies from around the world. The first part looks at cognitive approaches to the earliest symbol-making while the second considers the interaction between images and writing in early scripts. The third part addresses images outside their boxes, showcasing how ancient communication devices can be reinterpreted. The final part features chapters reflecting on embodied semiotic approaches to the representation of images. This book will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, archaeology, cognitive psychology, and linguistic and cultural anthropology.

The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts

The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written Artefacts PDF Author: Marilina Betrò, Jesper Eidem, Gianluca Miniaci, Michael Friedrich, Cécile Michel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111361187
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description


The Materiality of Text – Placement, Perception, and Presence of Inscribed Texts in Classical Antiquity

The Materiality of Text – Placement, Perception, and Presence of Inscribed Texts in Classical Antiquity PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004379436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Written by an international cast of experts, The Materiality of Text showcases a wide range of innovative methodologies from ancient history, literary studies, epigraphy, and art history and provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on the physicality of writing in antiquity. The contributions focus on epigraphic texts in order to gauge questions of their placement, presence, and perception: starting with an analysis of the forms of writing and its perception as an act of physical and cultural intervention, the volume moves on to consider the texts’ ubiquity and strategic positioning within epigraphic, literary, and architectural spaces. The contributors rethink modern assumptions about the processes of writing and reading and establish novel ways of thinking about the physical forms of ancient texts.

An Archaeology of Interaction

An Archaeology of Interaction PDF Author: Carl Knappett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198706939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Think of a souvenir from a foreign trip, or an heirloom passed down the generations - distinctive individual artefacts allow us to think and act beyond the proximate, across both space and time. While this makes anecdotal sense, what does scholarship have to say about the role of artefacts inhuman thought? Surprisingly, material culture research tends also to focus on individual artefacts. But objects rarely stand independently from one another they are interconnected in complex constellations. This innovative volume asserts that it is such 'networks of objects' that instill objectswith their power, enabling them to evoke distant times and places for both individuals and communities.Using archaeological case studies from the Bronze Age of Greece throughout, Knappett develops a long-term, archaeological angle on the development of object networks in human societies. He explores the benefits such networks create for human interaction across scales, and the challenges faced byancient societies in balancing these benefits against their costs. In objectifying and controlling artefacts in networks, human communities can lose track of the recalcitrant pull that artefacts exercise. Materials do not always do as they are asked. We never fully understand all their aspects. Thiswe grasp in our everyday, unconscious working in the phenomenal world, but overlook in our network thinking. And this failure to attend to things and give them their due can lead to societal "disorientation".

Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field

Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field PDF Author: Jörg Quenzer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110384825
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Script and writing were among the most important inventions in human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission. Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for many regions of the world, no unified discipline of ‘manuscript studies’ has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned with material, philological and cultural aspects of different manuscript traditions.

Life in Medieval Landscapes

Life in Medieval Landscapes PDF Author: R. J. Silvester
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781905119400
Category : City and town life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This title presents new studies on key themes in the economic and social history of the Middle Ages. Covering the nature of landscape regions in Britain and Ireland and studies of labour and lordship, it focusses on medieval England and understanding the lives of peasants and labourers.

A Book Forged in Hell

A Book Forged in Hell PDF Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069113989X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published. Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat to faith, social and political harmony, and everyday morality, and its author was almost universally regarded as a religious subversive and political radical who sought to spread atheism throughout Europe. Steven Nadler tells the story of this book: its radical claims and their background in the philosophical, religious, and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as the vitriolic reaction these ideas inspired. A vivid story of incendiary ideas and vicious backlash, A Book Forged in Hell will interest anyone who is curious about the origin of some of our most cherished modern beliefs--Jacket p. [2].

Scientific Methods and Cultural Heritage

Scientific Methods and Cultural Heritage PDF Author: Gilberto Artioli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199548269
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
The scientific analysis of cultural heritage materials poses specific and often difficult analytical challenges. This book attempts to rationalize the links between the most commonly asked questions in archaeology, art history, and conservation with the potential answers resulting from the vast array of scientific techniques presently available.