Silvia Ferrara – författare

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.

This volume offers the first comprehensive examination of an ancient writing system from Cyprus and Syria known as Cypro-Minoan. After Linear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, other un-deciphered scripts of the second millennium BC from the Aegean world (Linear A) and the Eastern Mediterranean (Cypro-Minoan) became the focus of those trying to crack this ancient and historical code. Despite several attempts for both syllabaries, this prospect has remained unrealized. This is especially true for Cypro-Minoan, the script of Late Bronze Age Cyprus found also at Ugarit in Syria, which, counting no more than 250 inscriptions, remains not only poorly documented, but also insufficiently explored in previous scholarship.Today progress in the study of this enigmatic script demands that we direct our attention to gaining new insight through a contextual analysis of Cypro-Minoan by tracing its life in the archaeological record and investigating its purpose and significance in the Cypriot and Syrian settlements that created and used it. With a new methodology concentrating on a ground-breaking contextual approach, Ferrara presents the first large-scale study of Cypro-Minoan with an analysis of all the inscriptions through a multidisciplinary perspective that embraces aspects of archaeology, epigraphy, and palaeography.

This volume is the first comprehensive archaeological catalogue of all the extant inscriptions written in the un-deciphered syllabary of Late Bronze Age Cyprus (1500-1200 BC): the so-called Cypro-Minoan script. In conjunction with Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions Volume 1: Analysis, this volume focuses on the physical reality of the inscribed objects containing Cypro-Minoan and the archaeological contexts in which they were found. Offering a detailed, systematic, and rigorous examination of both the objects and their functions in the material record, it proposes a new way of examining the inscriptions. This comprehensive standpoint therefore considers not only the inscriptions themselves, but more importantly the contexts and functions of the inscribed objects, which are significant for the documentary evidence they bear and the part they play as physical entities manufactured, shaped, and used by past peoples for a defined purpose.Organized in a catalogue format, each object is analysed, illustrated, and accompanied by a detailed commentary on the context of recovery and typological characteristics with full bibliographical references. While a standalone reference work, it aims to showcase the inscribed objects discussed in Volume 1: Analysis, fully illustrating them in a series of photographs, including 50 colour plates, and drawings.

Nearly 4000 years ago a hieroglyphic script was used on Crete which predates Linear A and Linear B, indeed any other writing in Europe, but remains undeciphered since its discovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the first comprehensive account of this script, which is analysed by the leading experts through an array of lenses, including archaeology, philology, palaeography, cognitive studies and decipherment theory, in order to showcase its importance in the history of writing. The book takes a broad approach to writing, understanding it not solely or even mainly as a visual tool to convey language, but primarily as a social and cultural phenomenon rooted in agency, materiality, and semiotics. The volume will provide an invaluable tool for scholars and will facilitate further research. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This innovative collection offers a holistic portrait of the multimodal communication potential of images from the Upper Paleolithic through to today, showcasing image-based creativity throughout the centuries.The volume seeks to extend the boundaries of our understanding of what language and writing can do to show how language can be understood as part of broader codes, as well as how images and figural objects can contribute to meaning-making in communication. The book is divided into four parts, each exploring a different dimension of the interplay between representation, symbolic meaning, and perception in the study of images, drawing on case studies from around the world. The first part looks at cognitive approaches to the earliest symbol-making while the second considers the interaction between images and writing in early scripts. The third part addresses images outside their boxes, showcasing how ancient communication devices can be reinterpreted. The final part features chapters reflecting on embodied semiotic approaches to the representation of images.This book will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, archaeology, cognitive psychology, and linguistic and cultural anthropology.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license 4.0 license.

This innovative collection offers a holistic portrait of the multimodal communication potential of images from the Upper Paleolithic through to today, showcasing image-based creativity throughout the centuries.The volume seeks to extend the boundaries of our understanding of what language and writing can do to show how language can be understood as part of broader codes, as well as how images and figural objects can contribute to meaning-making in communication. The book is divided into four parts, each exploring a different dimension of the interplay between representation, symbolic meaning, and perception in the study of images, drawing on case studies from around the world. The first part looks at cognitive approaches to the earliest symbol-making while the second considers the interaction between images and writing in early scripts. The third part addresses images outside their boxes, showcasing how ancient communication devices can be reinterpreted. The final part features chapters reflecting on embodied semiotic approaches to the representation of images.This book will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, archaeology, cognitive psychology, and linguistic and cultural anthropology.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license 4.0 license.

This book aims to provide methods, protocols, and discussion topics for those who wish to examine in depth the molecular mechanisms of adaptation and versality of bacteria and would like to envisage their evolution responses in the fast changing Antropocene.Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and key tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Methods and Protocols aims to be a useful and practical guide to new researchers and experts looking to expand their knowledge.

This book aims to provide methods, protocols, and discussion topics for those who wish to examine in depth the molecular mechanisms of adaptation and versality of bacteria and would like to envisage their evolution responses in the fast changing Antropocene.Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and key tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Methods and Protocols aims to be a useful and practical guide to new researchers and experts looking to expand their knowledge.

‘Ferrara’s book is an introduction to writing as a process of revelation, but it’s also a celebration of these things still undeciphered, and many other tantalising mysteries besides.‘ - The SpectatorThis book tells the story of our greatest invention. Or, it almost does. Almost, because while the story has a beginning – in fact, it has many beginnings, not only in Mesopotamia, 3,100 years before the birth of Christ, but also in China, Egypt and Central America – and it certainly has a middle, one that snakes through the painted petroglyphs of Easter Island, through the great machines of empires and across the desks of inspired, brilliant scholars, the end of the story remains to be written.The invention of writing allowed humans to create a record of their lives and to persist past the limits of their lifetimes. In the shadows and swirls of ancient inscriptions, we can decipher the stories they sought to record, but we can also tease out the timeless truths of human nature, of our ceaseless drive to connect, create and be remembered.The Greatest Invention chronicles an uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research and the faint, fleeting echo of writing’s future. Professor Silvia Ferrara, a modern-day adventurer who travels the world studying ancient texts, takes us along with her; we touch the knotted, coloured strings of the Incan khipu and consider the case of the Phaistos disk. Ferrara takes us to the cutting edge of decipherment, where high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye, and further still, to gaze at the outline of writing’s future. The Greatest Invention lifts the words off every page and changes the contours of the world around us – just keep reading.‘The Greatest Invention is a celebration not of achievements, but of moments of illumination and “the most important thing in the world: our desire to be understood”.‘ - TLS