WRiting At Pylos: palaeography, tablet production, and the work of the Mycenaean scribes

Descripción del proyecto

Formación y prácticas de escritura en Lineal B

En el yacimiento arqueológico del palacio de Néstor, al suroeste de Grecia, se descubrió una gran cantidad de textos en griego micénico. Estos textos se escribieron en tablas de arcilla en Lineal B y ofrecen información única de las actividades administrativas y económicas del palacio y de las prácticas de una comunidad de escribas. El proyecto WRAP, financiado con fondos europeos, proporcionará nuevos conocimientos sobre los textos micénicos y el entorno en el que los escribas trabajaban y eran formados para utilizar el sistema de escritura Lineal B en la administración del palacio. Esta investigación interdisciplinar en la Escuela Británica de Atenas combinará métodos arqueológicos y epigráficos mediante análisis detallados de la paleogeografía y las características físicas de las tablas originales a fin de explicar los procesos y las personas que participaron en la escritura de las tablas de arcilla.

Objetivo

WRAP (WRiting At Pylos) will combine epigraphic and archaeological methods to provide new insights into the Mycenaean Greek texts written on clay tablets in the palace of Pylos in SW Greece, and into the ways in which scribes used the Linear B writing system in their work within the palatial administration. As the only Mycenaean site with a large number of securely contemporary Linear B tablets (c.1000 nearly all written within the same year c.1200 BCE), Pylos offers a unique view of palatial economic and administrative concerns and of the practices of a community of writers. This innovative interdisciplinary action, based in the British School at Athens and supervised by Prof. John Bennet, a leading expert in interdisciplinary studies of Linear B, will shed new light on the processes and people involved in creating the clay tablets and the ways in which the scribes were trained to use this writing system for administrative recordkeeping; it will also illuminate the development of the Linear B writing system over time and the use of palaeographic variation to date groups of texts. These objectives will be accomplished through a detailed analysis of the palaeography and physical features of the original tablets, which this action’s location in Athens will enable the ER to study in the National Archaeological Museum, and an experimental archaeology project on the processes of tablet production, to be carried out in conjunction with the BSA’s Fitch Laboratory, which will provide training in ceramic analysis and experimental design. This ground-breaking investigation of palaeography and tablet production will not only produce a new understanding of the work of the scribes of Pylos and make important contributions to ongoing debates over Mycenaean chronology and history; it will also provide a more rigorous comparative and methodological basis for future studies aimed at a more complete understanding of the practices of the scribes from all of the Mycenaean palaces.