Writing Beyond the Palaces? The Case of the Ivory Houses at Mycenae (20 min)
Presenters
Theodore M. S. Nash, University of Michigan
Abstract
The Linear B script has,
since its discovery, been associated closely with the buildings and
institutions that we refer to as palaces. This is a function of both where
tablets are found—almost always within the palaces themselves—and their
content, often records of personnel, resources, and industry within the
palatial territory. But this relationship is less obvious at Mycenae, where 41
tablets were found in a building complex known as the Ivory Houses, four
interconnected buildings southwest of the citadel dating to ca. 1300 B.C.E.
(Mid–Late Helladic IIIB). Prior scholarship has been much concerned with
defining the relationship between the Ivory Houses and the palace, an argument
that often hinges on the presence of Linear B and our understanding of writing
as a palatial technology. But it has paid less attention to specific details of
the tablets themselves. In this talk, I will present preliminary conclusions of
a holistic study of this deposit, ranging from archaeological context and
tablet layout to palaeography and linguistic features. Taken together, these
indicate a very different model of scribal activity from the larger and
better-studied deposits at Pylos and Knossos. The result is a challenge to
conventional models of Mycenaean literacy and can help us better to understand
the spread of writing across the Mycenaean world.
AIA-8B