Background to the Project
This
inter-disciplinary project aims to study the role of incipient literacy
as a critical factor in the formation of urban/state societies, and in
the emergence of differing cultural identities. It will focus on three
key areas of ancient Italy - the north-east, south-east and
north-west - where local communities developed in contact with the
established urban societies of the Etruscans, the Western Greeks and the
Romans. The project falls within the context of recent work on literacy,
ethnicity, culture-contact and state-formation, which represent major
themes of research within archaeology, ancient history and anthropology.
While culture-contact is often seen as a contributing factor in
state-formation, and the growth of conscious ethnicity has also been
related to increasing social complexity, literacy by contrast has been
treated as a case apart, and strictly within the narrow confines of an
uncontextualised linguistics. The new project seeks instead to integrate
all these perspectives into an inter-disciplinary framework.
The
Evidence
Each area has produced some hundreds of inscriptions, of the 6th to 1st
centuries BC. They occur on a wide variety of artefact types (e.g. pots,
loomweights, figurines, statues, plaques, sarcophagi, votive cippi,
funerary inscriptions and cave walls). They use scripts variously
derived from Greek or Etruscan models but offer a wealth of evidence as
to the development of local language and inter-language interaction.
Traditionally language groupings have been labelled as (Gallo-)Lepontic
and Ligurian (NW Italy), Raetic and Venetic (NE) and Messapic (SE).
There is a body of traditional grammatical and philological work on the
inscriptions, but these studies rarely take account of the
archaeological context, and the wider social background. We propose to
record the material on new databases, recording archaeological
contextual information as well as comprehensive descriptions of the
inscriptions. These
databases will serve to organise the material in a systematic manner and
to enable it to be investigated through the identification of patterns
of correlation and exclusion. For instance, some types of inscription
may appear exclusively in funerary contexts, others on votives in
sanctuary sites; there may be differences between inscriptions on
monumental structures and those on artefacts or, within the latter
category, differences between inscriptions found on artefacts made of
different materials. We shall also attempt to identify chronological
patterns of use over time. As well as looking for patterns within the
bodies of data being investigated we shall also look for similarities
and contrasts with the way writing was used in the Greek and Etruscan
communities from which the local groups took their alphabets, and also
subsequent Roman usage patterns. We hope, eventually, to make our
database available on this website. For more information about the
database, its structure and its proposed contents, please see our database
page. During the first year of the project (2002-3), we are concentrating on evidence from north-east
Italy.
Project aims
The
broad research aim is to explore the role played by the adoption of
writing and literate skills in the development of social complexity in
culture-contact situations. The comparative nature of the project should
allow the identification of both shared cultural processes of wide
applicability and specific factors operating locally.
Examples of some specific questions to be addressed include:
a) the restriction of literate skills to selected contexts, e.g. the
'ritual' area. Preliminary studies suggest that there is a heavy
emphasis on the ritual use of writing in all three areas, with most
inscriptions coming from either funerary or sanctuary sites. However,
there are many local variations. For instance, in SE Italy inscriptions
occur on the walls of caves such as the Grotta della Poesia and the
Grotta Pagliara, although this practice never occurs in association with
the Greek settlements. Some appear to represent dedications to deities,
which would support an interpretation of the caves as cult places,
perhaps representing the continuation of a long prehistoric tradition of
cave cults in southeast Italy. The local use of writing on cave walls
might provisionally be interpreted as a practice in which the new elite
technology of writing was used to bring renewed validity to time-honoured
rituals carried out in caves, while recursively the ritual brought
validity to the new technology by incorporating it within established
local symbolic systems and social practices.
b) literate skills as the exclusive prerogative of a religious and/or
political elite. This might be assessed through examination of the
absolute numbers of inscriptions, the variety of contexts in which they
occur and, sometimes, the content of the texts (e.g. plausible
interpretations as explicit references to priests and priestesses,
royalty or officials of various kinds). Where inscriptions occur on
everyday objects such as loom-weights, we might deduce that literacy (at
some level) was not restricted to elites but more widespread.
c) the association of developing literacy with one or both
genders. Analysis of contexts in which identifiably female and
male names occur may help elucidate the nature of these roles and also
throw light on other aspects of gender roles, relations and ideology in
this society.
d) the technology of writing and its relationship to other technologies
and craft skills. One way in which this can be examined is by looking at
the different materials on which inscriptions are found. For instance,
where bronze objects were inscribed at the time of manufacture, we may
assume that some bronze smiths were literate (at least to some extent)
and we may wish to deduce some connection between the craft of
metal-working and the craft of writing. We can also look at the
materials used for writing, such as the bronze writing palettes and
styluses discussed above, although it will be necessary to consider the
distinction between everyday tools and their symbolic counterparts
deposited in sanctuaries or tombs.
e) the application of the new literacy to specific purposes, the role of
the 'reader', and the importance of symbolic function. This involves
consideration of more general theoretical issues concerning literacy. In
particular we shall examine critically the interpretation of writing as
communication and the concept of the reader. For instance, we shall ask
who might be considered the 'reader' in the many cases of writing
interred in tombs, inscribed on cave walls (distant from natural light),
or buried in votive deposits in sanctuaries. At this preliminary stage
we feel that writing may often have had a symbolic function in these
societies, not necessarily directly connected with the content of the
inscriptions, but more closely related to the social contexts in which
they were produced, displayed and disposed of.
