Meaningful Practices

Overview & Synopsis

The volume explores some aspects of the nonscribal communication systems used by the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean societies in the Bronze Age, ranging from seals, tokens, potter’s marks, weight and capacity systems, and marks on loom weights. The chronological span goes from the 4th millennium to the entire 2nd millennium BC, through the presentation of several case studies and methodological considerations. In these societies, writing is used, especially in official and administrative contexts, but nevertheless a wide range of other parallel communication codes is present. It is therefore necessary to investigate the semantic and social space occupied by these “other” codes and their importance also in a scribal context. This is a type of documentation that is rarely analysed as a whole and in a comparative way: and this is precisely the strength of the volume.