Recent contributions on literacy have focused on analysing writing as a mode of communication, rather than a technology, and as an entity that is socially learned, shaped, or transmitted (Houston 2004a, 2012; Baines et al. 2008), rather than a tool for language notation. This approach is embedded in a model whose focus is to integrate literacy into social practices, attaching an ideological significance to writing. From this perspective, writing becomes a subject worthy of ethnographic attention, to be analysed as the product of practices within the specificity of a cultural setting. Recent anthropological narratives also mark the connections of scripts to the social and political needs of power structures within society, constructing them as artefacts of culture, beyond language notation. Scholars specialising in the scripts of Egypt, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Japan have developed a comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon of writing on a global scale. With exceptions, the Aegean features very little, and the broader Mediterranean basin is treated in a few articles with a regional focus. A more in-depth, wide-ranging investigation is needed.
PM Steele, F. (2017). Another Beginning’s End: Secondary Script Formation in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. Oxford : Oxbow.
Another Beginning’s End: Secondary Script Formation in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean
FERRARA, SILVIA
2017
Abstract
Recent contributions on literacy have focused on analysing writing as a mode of communication, rather than a technology, and as an entity that is socially learned, shaped, or transmitted (Houston 2004a, 2012; Baines et al. 2008), rather than a tool for language notation. This approach is embedded in a model whose focus is to integrate literacy into social practices, attaching an ideological significance to writing. From this perspective, writing becomes a subject worthy of ethnographic attention, to be analysed as the product of practices within the specificity of a cultural setting. Recent anthropological narratives also mark the connections of scripts to the social and political needs of power structures within society, constructing them as artefacts of culture, beyond language notation. Scholars specialising in the scripts of Egypt, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Japan have developed a comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon of writing on a global scale. With exceptions, the Aegean features very little, and the broader Mediterranean basin is treated in a few articles with a regional focus. A more in-depth, wide-ranging investigation is needed.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
