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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE

Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE

Whitehouse, Ruth

Paperback

Series: Ucl World Archaeology

ArchaeologyAncient RomeItalian History

ISBN10: 135041252X
ISBN13: 9781350412521
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Apr 30 2026
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.91
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

The epigraphy of 1st-millennium-BCE Italy has been studied for many years, but these studies have largely concentrated on the languages encoded in the inscriptions and their semantic meanings. This book takes a more holistic approach that looks not only at content, but also the archaeological contexts of the inscriptions and the materiality of their 'supports': the artefacts and monuments on which the inscriptions occur.

The first writing in Italy was not a local invention, but was introduced by the Phoenicians and Greeks in the 9th-8th centuries BCE. It was taken up by number of indigenous communities over the subsequent centuries to write their own languages, before these were eventually submerged by the spread of Latin.

In a series of theoretical, methodological and interpretative essays, Ruth Whitehouse explores what can be learned about how writing was used by these communities and what it meant to them. The bodies of data considered relate to Venetic and Raetic (the northeast), Lepontic (the northwest), Messapic (the southeast) and Etruscan (west central Italy, extending also into Campania in the south and the Po plain in the north). While not a comprehensive survey, there are enough different groups to allow a comparative approach to be adopted. Analysis of the datasets is able to reveal the similarities and differences between them, as well as identify features that were widespread in 1st-millennium-BCE Italy and others that were more idiosyncratic and specific to particular cultural groups. Placing materiality at the centre of study allows a reconsideration of the roles writing played in the lives of the individuals and groups who occupied Italy in the 1st millennium BCE.

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