As I said in my previous post, I’m just starting a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, and I wanted to say more here about what these fellowships actually are and what the process for applying for them is like. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) are part of the European Union’s Horizon research funding scheme; the specific type of fellowship I have, an MSC Individual European Fellowship, provides funding for 1-2 years for postdoctoral researchers who are moving to or within Europe (for information on other kinds of MSC fellowships, see here: e.g. there are fellowships to support spending time outside of Europe or returning from a career break).
I did an interview in Cora Beth Knowles’ “Comfort Classics” series about one of my favourite Linear B tablets – featuring labyrinths, doodling, and cake-baking! You can read it here:
I must have first seen a picture of it sometime during my MPhil degree in 2011-12, when I started learning to read Linear B and spent a lot of time practicing on drawings and photographs of tablets. Later on I was able to see the real thing on a study visit to Greece – it’s on display in the National Archaeological…
I’ve been a postdoctoral Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, for the last four years. As part of this fellowship, I’ve continued the work I began during my PhD, looking at ways to understand more about the remaining ‘undeciphered’ signs of Linear B – the sound-values of fourteen of this writing system’s eighty-seven syllabic signs are still uncertain, nearly 70 years after the script as a whole was deciphered. My monograph based on my thesis, The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B: Interpretation and Scribal Practices, which has just been published with CUP, not only tries to establish as much as is currently possible about the most likely types of sound-value each of these signs may have, but also uses them to explore wider issues about the Linear B writing system’s creation from its parent script Linear A and its use by the Mycenaean scribes to write administrative documents. Other publications arising from my PhD include an article called “The mystery of the Mycenaean labyrinth: the value of Linear B pu2 and related signs”, which looks at one particular sign whose exact sound-value is debated, due largely to its appearance in the word ‘labyrinth’ (da-pu2-ri-to), and the implications its interpretation has for the relationship between Linear B and Linear A, and a book chapter “Processes of script adaptation and creation in Linear B: the evidence of the “extra” signs“, which explores similar issues to do with the initial creation of Linear B but also investigates the script’s ongoing development as the writers who used it created new signs to fit in with the needs of the administrative records they were writing.
Linear B tablet recording various kinds of livestock
Erasing writing on a clay tablet – for instance, by dragging the flat end of a stylus over the damp clay – leaves traces of this part of the writing process: marks on the clay showing that something has been erased and, if we’re lucky, enough of the original signs that we can read what the writer originally wrote, before they erased and perhaps re-wrote the text. Traces like these in the administrative Linear B texts from Late Bronze Age Greece (c.1400-1200 BCE) are the subject of my latest article, ‘Scribes as editors: tracking changes in the Linear B documents’, which just came out in the American Journal of Archaeology.
Linear B tablet with four lines of text erased. Underneath the horizontal marks from erasure process, traces of the original signs can still be seen. Photo: PY Jn 725.14-.27, courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati; annotation by author.Continue reading “Scribes as editors: tracking changes in the Linear B documents”
Content note: racism, in particular anti-Black racism, and white supremacy (this note also applies to all linked articles); ableism
Slight departure from the usual Linear B-related content around here, but I want to share a fantastic collection of photographs depicting the Olympian gods – which I already shared on social media, but here I have more space to reflect a bit on these photos’ significance and also share some relevant resources. The photo series is entitled “20 gods and goddesses for 2020” (in Spanish: “20 Dioses y Diosas para 2020”) by photographer Ana Martinez and stylist Mario Ville Kattaca. Here are just two of my favourites (though choosing was incredibly difficult):
I’m finding it hard to believe it’s been over two years since I visited the archaeological site my research focuses on – the Mycenaean ‘Palace of Nestor’ at Pylos in Messenia (south-western mainland Greece). The nostalgia’s been brought on by the team behind the excavation of the ‘Griffin Warrior Tomb‘ sharing some links earlier today to virtual tours of reconstructions of what the palace may have looked like before it was destroyed around 1200 BCE. Here’s the most extensive, from ‘Ancient Athens 3D‘: since it doesn’t have captions, I’ve provided a bit of commentary below, along with pictures of what these parts of the palace actually look like now. Enjoy the tour!
The tour starts with the front porch, and then heads through into the courtyard inside.
Front porch (reconstructed)
Front porch (as it is now)
Courtyard with surrounding colonnades and balconies (reconstructed)
Courtyard as it is now, with column base
It then detours outside to the ‘Southwestern Building’, showing the frescoes in its porch. There’s another, more detailed reconstruction just of this building available here. Finally, the tour goes back into the main building, through the courtyard and a small vestibule (more frescoes) to the megaron or throne room, with its large central hearth and elaborate frescoes of griffins surrounding the throne. Here you can see not just the reconstruction and the actual view of the room now, but also some of the fragments from which the frescoes have been reconstructed.
Throne room reconstruction
Throne room as it is now
Fragments of the griffin fresco
As you can see from all these pictures, quite a lot of imagination can be needed when trying to reconstruct how a two-story, highly decorated building which now survives only as low walls and painted fragments might originally have looked!
I wrote some more about my forthcoming book, “The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B: Interpretation and Scribal Practices”, on the Cambridge University Press blog – click here to read it!
I’m thrilled to say that my monograph based on my PhD, entitled The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B: Interpretation and Scribal Practices, is due to be published in August by Cambridge University Press. I started my PhD in October 2012, submitted it in April 2016, graduated in January 2017, and have been working (on and off) in turning it into a book ever since then. So this announcement feels like it’s been a very long time coming, but the proofs have gone to the printers and the book is available to pre-order on the CUP website, so I guess it’s really happening!
Entrance of the palace of Pylos, with ‘Archives Complex’ to left
I’m pleased to announce the publication of an article I co-wrote with John Bennet of the British School at Athens and Jack L. Davis and Sharon R. Stocker of the University of Cincinnati, publishing two fragments of Linear B tablets discovered during the Cincinnati excavations at Pylos in 2017. The article, published in the journal Kadmos, is available here (with subscription), or you can request a copy of the pre-print via the Cambridge University repository. The two tablets are very fragmentary, but they have some interesting features – including a new example of one of the undeciphered signs I wrote my PhD on, which was pretty exciting for me (though, to manage expectations, it unfortunately doesn’t help make any progress in deciphering it). There’s also a mysterious third object with markings that don’t appear to be Linear B, or indeed any other writing system we can identify, but we’ve included it in case anyone else can come up with any suggestions!
Reference: Anna P. Judson, John Bennet, Jack L. Davis, and Sharon R. Stocker, ‘Two new Linear B tablets and an enigmatic find from Bronze Age Pylos (Palace of Nestor)’, Kadmos 58 (2019), pp.111-123.
I’ve done a spotlight talk about my Mycenaean board game ‘Mycenopoly‘ for an upcoming event on research dissemination for early-career researchers organised by the Women’s Classical Committee UK (full disclosure, I am one of the organisers!). You can watch it here (it’s 6 minutes long; there are captions).
I encourage you to check out the other spotlight talks too – there are three other fantastic talks on using research into human-animal interactions in antiquity while volunteering in zoos; 18th-century British painter Angelica Kaufmann’s use of classical antiquity; and a project for researchers of ancient gender and sexuality in Brazil. You can find all of them in this YouTube playlist.
(NB: the event is currently fully booked, but there is a waiting list in operation: see here for details. Most of the talks on publishing and disseminating your research are pre-recorded and available on YouTube here).
I wrote some more about 
