Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WRAP (WRiting At Pylos: palaeography, tablet production, and the work of the Mycenaean scribes)
Reporting period: 2020-11-02 to 2022-11-01
This project, carried out by Dr Anna P. Judson and supervised by Prof. John Bennet at the British School at Athens (BSA), combined epigraphic and archaeological methods to provide new insights into the Mycenaean Greek texts written on clay tablets in the Late Bronze Age centre of Pylos in south-west Greece, and into the ways in which scribes used the Linear B writing system in their work within its 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 has used experimental archaeology to shed new light on the processes and people involved in creating the clay tablets, showing how the tablet-makers’ choices were influenced by their own or others’ future use of the texts; analysis of palaeography (handwriting) and orthography has also illuminated both the development of the Linear B writing system over time and the ways in which the scribes were trained to use this writing system.
Tablet production: Experimental production of tablets in the BSA’s Fitch Laboratory, combined with autopsy of the tablets from Pylos in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, enabled Dr Judson to observe and test the different production methods in use, looking at their effects on the process of shaping the clay and on the finished tablet before and after drying, and hence the reasons for choosing these different methods. Analysing the production techniques of groups of related tablets shed further light on the interaction between the ‘making’ and ‘writing’ stages of the process of administrative document creation and the varying choices individuals could make at each stage. The results of this study were presented at several conferences and seminars, including a panel on experimental archaeology organised by Dr Judson at the UK Classical Association conference (2022); an article on this topic has been accepted by the Annual of the British School at Athens, and a video for schools about the experiments, along with activity sheets for students in English and Greek, is available at www.bsa.ac.uk/videos/how-to-make-a-linear-b-tablet/.
Palaeography and chronology: During her autopsy of the tablets, Dr Judson viewed and photographed the complete corpus of tablets from Pylos and began the palaeographic analysis of Linear B sign-forms. As part of this study, her concordance of the different systems in use for attributing Pylian texts to scribal hands has been made freely available online (hcommons.org/docs/judson-copy/). The full palaeographic analysis is still in progress, but a sample of ten signs has been fully analysed and used as the basis for an article co-authored with Dr Ester Salgarella (Cambridge) on patterns of palaeographic variation seen throughout the history of both Linear B and its parent script Linear A. This article demonstrates that there is a high degree of continuity in the variation present at all chronological stages of these scripts, and therefore that the current use of varying palaeographic features as a criterion for dating texts is not reliable, while providing a first step towards a methodologically secure understanding of these scripts’ development over time. Dr Judson’s related research into the archaeological contexts of the few tablets from Pylos which may date to an earlier period demonstrated that there is no firm archaeological evidence for the early dating of these tablets, and provided the basis for a joint contribution with Prof. Bennet to a paper on the chronology of the final destruction of Pylos (co-authored with Profs Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, Cincinnati; Dr Salvatore Vitale, Pisa; and Dr Hariclia Brecoulaki, National Hellenic Research Foundation). Both of these papers will appear in 2023 in the volume 'KO-RO-NO-WE-SA: Proceedings of the 15th Mycenological Colloquium 21-24 September 2021, Athens' (eds J. Bennet, A. Karnava and T. Meissner).
Scribal training: Dr Judson completed a study, begun in her previous postdoctoral position, of orthographic variation in the texts from Pylos. This study demonstrated that in some circumstances orthographic variation was entirely normal even for a single writer and/or within a single word, and that this was due to a training system in which all writers learned a single orthographic tradition which permitted some types of variation; it is now published in the Cambridge Classical Journal (open-access: doi.org/10.1017/S1750270522000057). The case-study signs were also analysed with respect to the palaeographic variation seen between different contemporaneous scribes and within the same scribe’s work, illuminating the methodological issues involved in palaeographic analysis, in particular the high level of individual variation and the complexity of the ways in which signs can vary, and demonstrating that previous analyses have not taken these fully into consideration when using palaeography to classify scribes into training groups. The results of both studies of scribal training were presented in the BSA’s Upper House Seminar series (May 2022; www.bsa.ac.uk/videos/scribal-training-in-mycenaean-pylos).
Dr Judson has also used her project results and research expertise to teach on courses run by the BSA for undergraduates, postgraduates, and schoolteachers. She has documented her research and her experience as an MSCA postdoctoral researcher through regular posts on her blog, ‘It’s All Greek To Me’ (itsallgreektoanna.wordpress.com) and is currently writing an invited contribution on the undeciphered Linear B signs, based on her 2020 monograph on this topic, for the volume 'The Legacy of Michael Ventris' (eds F. Auro Jorro, J. Piquero and E.R. Luján, 2023).
Palaeography and chronology: During her autopsy of the tablets, Dr Judson viewed and photographed the complete corpus of tablets from Pylos and began the palaeographic analysis of Linear B sign-forms. As part of this study, her concordance of the different systems in use for attributing Pylian texts to scribal hands has been made freely available online (hcommons.org/docs/judson-copy/). The full palaeographic analysis is still in progress, but a sample of ten signs has been fully analysed and used as the basis for an article co-authored with Dr Ester Salgarella (Cambridge) on patterns of palaeographic variation seen throughout the history of both Linear B and its parent script Linear A. This article demonstrates that there is a high degree of continuity in the variation present at all chronological stages of these scripts, and therefore that the current use of varying palaeographic features as a criterion for dating texts is not reliable, while providing a first step towards a methodologically secure understanding of these scripts’ development over time. Dr Judson’s related research into the archaeological contexts of the few tablets from Pylos which may date to an earlier period demonstrated that there is no firm archaeological evidence for the early dating of these tablets, and provided the basis for a joint contribution with Prof. Bennet to a paper on the chronology of the final destruction of Pylos (co-authored with Profs Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, Cincinnati; Dr Salvatore Vitale, Pisa; and Dr Hariclia Brecoulaki, National Hellenic Research Foundation). Both of these papers will appear in 2023 in the volume 'KO-RO-NO-WE-SA: Proceedings of the 15th Mycenological Colloquium 21-24 September 2021, Athens' (eds J. Bennet, A. Karnava and T. Meissner).
Scribal training: Dr Judson completed a study, begun in her previous postdoctoral position, of orthographic variation in the texts from Pylos. This study demonstrated that in some circumstances orthographic variation was entirely normal even for a single writer and/or within a single word, and that this was due to a training system in which all writers learned a single orthographic tradition which permitted some types of variation; it is now published in the Cambridge Classical Journal (open-access: doi.org/10.1017/S1750270522000057). The case-study signs were also analysed with respect to the palaeographic variation seen between different contemporaneous scribes and within the same scribe’s work, illuminating the methodological issues involved in palaeographic analysis, in particular the high level of individual variation and the complexity of the ways in which signs can vary, and demonstrating that previous analyses have not taken these fully into consideration when using palaeography to classify scribes into training groups. The results of both studies of scribal training were presented in the BSA’s Upper House Seminar series (May 2022; www.bsa.ac.uk/videos/scribal-training-in-mycenaean-pylos).
Dr Judson has also used her project results and research expertise to teach on courses run by the BSA for undergraduates, postgraduates, and schoolteachers. She has documented her research and her experience as an MSCA postdoctoral researcher through regular posts on her blog, ‘It’s All Greek To Me’ (itsallgreektoanna.wordpress.com) and is currently writing an invited contribution on the undeciphered Linear B signs, based on her 2020 monograph on this topic, for the volume 'The Legacy of Michael Ventris' (eds F. Auro Jorro, J. Piquero and E.R. Luján, 2023).
This project has promoted the study of Linear B writing practices – including the manufacture of the clay tablets and the palaeography and orthography of their texts – as evidence for the tablets’ administrative uses in the Mycenaean palaces. It has introduced new experimental methodology into the study of the tablets as material objects, answering questions about the purposes of different manufacturing methods never previously addressed experimentally. It has also made important contributions towards our understanding of the nature of the palaeographic and orthographic variation present within the work of the community of writers at Pylos, and the significance of both of these for reconstructing scribal training and the development of the Linear B script over time. Moreover, it has provided a key demonstration that the methodology currently in use for dating tablets based on palaeography is insecure, with significant effects for our understanding of the archaeology and history of the Mycenaean palaces of Crete and mainland Greece. By establishing new research methodologies and demonstrating the broad potential of writing practices to provide evidence for the activities of the Mycenaean writers, this project has not only advanced our understanding of these activities as part of the Pylian administrative system, but also laid a foundation for ongoing research to illuminate further the practices of communities using the Linear B writing system across the Mycenaean world.