Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean

Philippa M. Steele is the Director of the CREWS Project, a Senior Research Associate at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Research Fellow of Magdalene College. She has previously been awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Evans Pritchard Lectureship at All Souls College, Oxford, followed by a European Research Council grant to run the CREWS Project, and has published widely on ancient languages and writing systems with a particular focus on Cyprus and the Aegean. Philip Boyes is a research associate at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. As part of the CREWS Project, he works on the social context of writing at Late Bronze Age Ugarit. He has previously worked on the archaeology of the East Mediterranean and Levant in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

[T]his volume, as a contribution to the research output of the CREWS project, encapsulates how the research of the CREWS core team and wider family has revolved around questions of the contexts and relatedness of writing systems and traditions

• Approaches to writing in the ancient Mediterranean and Near EastPhilippa M. SteeleRelations between script, writing material and layout: the case of the Anatolian HieroglyphsWillemijn WaalWord division in Sicilian inscriptionsRobert CrellinWhat is an Alphabet good for?Csaba La’daMeasuring particularity and similarity in archaic Greek alphabets with NLPNatalia Elvira AstorecaBorrowing, invention, remodelling: Observations on the rare letters of the Phrygian alphabet and the problem of formation of Anatolian alphabetsRostislav OreshkoCypro-Minoan and its potmarks and vessel inscriptions as challenges to Aegean Scripts corporaCassandra DonnellyDuctus in Cypro-Minoan writing. Definition, purpose and distribution of stroke typesMartina PoligThe introduction of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus, a case study in material cultureBeatrice PestarinoThe death of alphabets at the end of the Bronze Age. How does the Deir ‘Alla alphabet fit the picture?Michel de VreezeEarly Egyptian writing from the perspective of the embodied practitionerKathryn PiquetteThe magic of writingPhilip J. Boyes