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Writing from Invention to Decipherment

Writing from Invention to Decipherment

Hardcover

Literary CriticismLinguisticsAncient History General

ISBN10: 0198908741
ISBN13: 9780198908746
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Dec 26 2024
Pages: 350
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.02 Width: 6.41 Depth: 9.31
Language: English
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.

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Literary Criticism