CONNECTING THE DOTS COUNTING WRITING & T
Language: English
Published by Archaeopress Archaeology, 2026
- Softcover
- New
Seller: Speedyhen, Hertfordshire, United KingdomSpeedyhen
AbeBooks seller since November 26, 2009
Condition: New
£ 25.20
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketSeller Inventory # NW9781805833307
- Title
- CONNECTING THE DOTS COUNTING WRITING & T
- Author
- SCHMANDT-BESSERAT, D
- Publisher
- Archaeopress Archaeology
- Publication year
- 2026
- Condition
- NEW
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1805833308
- ISBN 13
- 9781805833307
In 1978, Scientific American caught the world by surprise with an article about the miniature clay cones, spheres, disks, tetrahedrons, and other geometric-shaped artifacts recovered by archaeologists from most Neolithic (c. 7500 bc) trenches dug in the Middle East―but hitherto ignored. The small artifacts, now called tokens, were daringly presented as possible precursors of writing by a Franco-American archaeologist, Denise Schmandt-Besserat.
Almost fifty years later, in Connecting the Dots, Denise Schmandt-Besserat takes stock of her life and work: how she singlehandedly pursued her research, traveling alone through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran to locate the present whereabouts of tokens from scientifically excavated sites, subsequently spending long hours measuring, sketching, and taking notes on thousands of examples in dark attics or basements of museums, before enjoying the exotic Middle Eastern souks or bazaars.
Above all, as the last in the long series of Schmandt-Besserat’s publications, including Before Writing and How Writing Came About, Connecting the Dots is the capstone of her theory that the need for agricultural recordkeeping by the earliest farmers gave rise to counting, writing and, yes, civilization.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Denise Schmandt-Besserat is Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin. She is best known for introducing tokens to archaeology. Working alone, she documented that the artifacts were used continuously between 7500 and 3000 BC in a vast area of the ancient Middle East, extending from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. She created the token typology of 16 types and over 300 subtypes, showing an evolution from plain-faced in the Neolithic, to bearing complex markings in the Bronze Age. Crucially, she identified the function of tokens as concrete counters used in a one-to-one correspondence, ultimately determining that the sketches of tokens on tablets contributed to history by becoming pictographs in the cuneiform script, the world’s first writing.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Speedyhen
Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since November 26, 2009
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