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.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: writing practices in socio-cultural context: Philip J. Boyes, Philippa M. Steele and Natalia Elvira Astoreca
• 2. Towards a social archaeology of writing practices: Philip J. Boyes
• 3. The lives of inscribed commemorative objects: the transformation of private personal memory in Mesopotamian temple contexts: Nancy Highcock
• 4. A cognitive archaeology of writing: concepts, models, goals: Karenleigh A. Overmann
• 5. The materiality of the Cretan Hieroglyphic script: textile production-related referents to hieroglyphic signs on seals and sealings from Middle Bronze Age Crete: Marie-Louise Nosch and Agata Ulanowska
• 6. Visual dimensions of Maya hieroglyphic writing: meanings beyond the surface: Christian M. Prager
• 7. Visibility of runic writing and its relation to Viking Age Society: Julia-Sophie Heier
• 8. Words beyond writings: how to decrypt the secret writings of the masters of psalmody (Yunnan, China)?: Aurélie Névot
• 9. A script ‘good to drink’. The invention of writing systems among the Sora and other tribes of India: Cécile Guillaume-Pey
• 10. Why did people in medieval Java use so many different script variants?: A.J. West
• 11. Cultures of writing: rethinking the ‘spread’ and ‘development’ of writing systems in the Bronze Age Mediterranean: Theodore Nash
• 12. Script, image and culture in the Maya world: a southeastern perspective: Kathryn M. Hudson and John S. Henderson
• 13. Writing and elite status in the Bronze Age Aegean: Sarah Finlayson
• 14. Why με? Personhood and agency in the earliest Greek inscriptions (800–550 BC): James Whitley
• 15. Names and authorship in the beginnings of Greek alphabetic writing: Natalia Elvira Astoreca
• 16. Marking identity through graphemes? A new look at the Sikel arrow-shaped alpha 303: Olga Tribulato and Valentina Mignosa
• Bibliography