One of the first things a classicist does after moving to Durham is, obviously, to pay a visit to Hadrian’s Wall: the wall begun by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 122 CE to mark the northern frontier of the Roman empire in Britain, whihc now runs across Cumbria and Northumberland. Housesteads is one of several forts along the wall that can be visited today – in fact, the best preserved of the forts, with remains of the four gateways, commander’s house, soldiers’ barracks, the hospital, granaries, and the famous toilets. Of course, in Roman archaeology, ‘best preserved’ still generally means a series of low stone walls marking the outlines of the buildings. Right now, though, Housesteads is looking a bit different – and more colourful – than usual:
Nearly two years ago, I was preparing to move to Athens to start a new research project ‘Writing at Pylos’ (acronym: WRAP), funded by the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, at the British School at Athens. It’s hard to believe that I’m now in the final stages of wrapping up the project (pun very much intended) before starting a new job in just a couple of days’ time: from September 1st I will officially be an Assistant Professor (Teaching) in the Department of Classics & Ancient History at Durham, teaching mostly classical Greek and Latin language, with a bit of epigraphy too (and yes, even some Linear B!).
Last (for now!) in my series of virtual tours of Mycenaean sites, following Tiryns and Mycenae in the north-east Peloponnese, is this tour of Thebes in Boeotia, north-west of Athens (Myceanean te-qa Thēgwai, classical Greek Θῆβαι Thēbai, modern Greek Θήβα Thiva).
This one is a bit different from the last two, because unlike most other Mycenaean palatial sites we know, the citadel of Thebes has been continuously occupied from the Bronze Age to the present day – so the central area of the Mycenaean site corresponds more or less exactly to the modern town centre. Evidently, this makes excavation a challenge; much of the work that’s been done has been rescue excavations before construction work, so relatively few of the excavated areas remain visible, and because excavations have taken place in lots of separate, mostly unconnected sites, it’s very hard to get a joined-up picture of the Mycenaean citadel as a whole. Below is a Google map of locations mentioned in this post; this interactive map, the product of Dr Anastasia Dakouri-Hild’s ‘Digital Thebes’ project’, is also handy for seeing where excavations have taken place even where the results are not visible (you can choose various layers to show finds from different time-periods, including plans of buildings which may be associated with the Mycenaean (Late Helladic) palace and findspots of ‘palatial’-type objects such as Linear B inscriptions, frescoes, and craft workshops).
Following on from last year’s virtual tour of the Mycenaean site of Tiryns, now it’s the turn of the site after which the “Mycenaean” societies of Late Bronze Age Greece are named – Mycenae (ancient Greek Μυκήναι, modern Greek Μυκήνες Mikines). This impressive fortified citadel is only about 20km from Tiryns, which was probably a subordinate/secondary site to Mycenae (although the exact relationship between the two is disputed), so if travelling by car the two can easily be done in one trip. Read on for the tour!
Everyone enjoys playing with clay, and now you can make and write your own Linear B tablet thanks to this video and worksheet based on my research into how these clay tablets were made in the Mycenaean palace of Pylos c.1200 BCE. This activity is suitable for use with school students, at home with your own children, or by anyone who feels like getting some clay and having a go! In the 12min-long video, I talk about what these tablets were used for, why knowing how they were made is important, and how experimental archaeology can help us answer that question, as well as demonstrating some different ways the tablets were made, which you and your students/children can then try out. The worksheet then explains how to write on your tablet in the Linear B script, as well as giving some extra information and prompts for discussion for use in running this activity. The worksheet is available in both English and Greek, and the video is in English with subtitles in both languages. Enjoy!
Σε όλους αρέσει να παίζουν με τον πηλό, και τώρα μπορείτε να φτιάξετε και να γράψετε τη δική σας πινακίδα σε Γραμμική Β! Ορίστε ένα βίντεο και ασκήσεις που βασίζονται στην έρευνά μου για το πως φτιάχτηκαν αυτές οι πινακίδες στο μυκηναϊκό ανάκτορο της Πύλου περίπου το 1200 π.Χ. Αυτή η δραστηριότητα είναι κατάλληλη για μαθήτες στα σχολεία, για τα παιδιά σας στο σπίτι, και για όποιον θέλει να την δοκιμάσει! Στο βίντεο (12 λεπτά) μιλώ για τις χρήσεις αυτών των πινακίδων, γιατί είναι σημαντικό να ξέρουμε πώς φτιάχτηκαν, και πώς η πειραματική αρχαιολογία μπορεί να μας βοηθήσει να το καταλάβουμε αυτό. Δείχνω επίσης διάφορες μεθόδους για την κατασκευή των πινακίδων, τις όποιες εσείς και οι μαθητές ή τα παιδιά σας μπορούν να δοκιμάσουν. Οι ασκήσεις θα βοηθήσουν τους μαθητές ή τα παιδιά να γράψουν στις πινακίδες τους σε Γραμμική Β, και έχουν επίσης πληροφορίες για τους καθηγητές ή τους γονείς. Το βίντεο είναι στα αγγλικά με αγγλικούς και ελληνικούς υπότιτλους, και οι ασκήσεις διατίθενται στα αγγλικά και στα ελληνικά (και τα δύο είναι επαγγελματικά μεταφρασμένα).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 885977.
Following on from my round-up of fonts to use for Linear B and other Aegean and Cypriot writing systems, a quick post to share two options for practicing reading Linear B online or on your phone!
The first option is a Memrise course to learn and practice all the signs of the Linear B script, including all the syllabograms (signs representing syllables, used to spell out words), logograms/ideograms (signs representing the objects being recorded on the Linear B administrative documents – people, animals, goods), and the weights and measures symbols. It was created by former Cambridge student C N Howarth for the course I used to teach there in reading Linear B texts, but is suitable for anyone wanting to learn or practice recognising the Linear B signs!
The second is a new “Learn Linear B” app (available for Android and iPhone), created by Bill Linney with consultation from Emily Egan, Dimitri Nakassis, and me. Unlike the Memrise course, it only includes the ‘core’ syllabograms (five vowel signs, and various series of signs representing a single consonant plus a vowel; not the more complex ‘extra’ signs or the undeciphered signs), and a selection of ideograms; however, it also has numerals and a vocabulary list with a selection of two-, three-, and four-character words, plus some contextual information.
Of course, there’s always also the good old-fashioned way I learned Linear B, by making flashcards out of index cards… If any other students or teachers of Linear B have other recommendations for practice quizzes etc, do let me know in the comments and I’ll add them here!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 885977.
My article on how Mycenaean scribes at the palace of Pylos learned to spell in the Linear B writing system has now been published in the Cambridge Classical Journal via ‘First View’ – i.e. it’s published online in advance of the print issue which should be out later this year. “Learning to spell in Linear B: orthography and scribal training in Mycenaean Pylos” is freely available to read and download (thanks to my EU Marie-Skłodowska Curie funding which enabled it to be published gold open access), and you can also read my previous blog posts giving some background on Linear B spelling (and how it’s surprisingly similar in some ways to the syllabary used to write the Native American language Cherokee!) and summarising my article. Questions and comments welcome below!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 885977.
For this year’s International Women’s Day, I’d like to share some of the women archaeologists whose Wikipedia pages I’ve been working on recently as part of the Women’s Classical Committee’s#WCCWiki editing project. We edit pages and create new ones to improve the representation of women and non-binary people in classics, archaeology, and ancient history on Wikipedia – since this is one of the most-visited websites in existence, having a (good) page makes a huge difference in how visible a subject is online, but Wikipedia unfortunately is subject to all the same biases as the rest of the world when it comes to gender balance. For some data on how #WCCWiki is making a difference, see this post: in 2016, before the project’s foundation, just 7% of articles about classicists were about women; now it’s up to 18% (so a vast improvement, but still a long way to go…).
Last year I wrote about some Greek archaeologists I was focusing on during my time in Greece, since another bias that plays into English-language writing about archaeology in Greece is a tendency to focus more on some of the English and American archaeologists working there rather than the Greeks. I’ve been carrying on with that theme, so when the archaeologist and curator Evi Stasinopoulou-Touloupa (Έβη Στασινοπούλου-Τουλούπα) passed away in October 2021, I created a page for her.
Replica of a Linear B tablet from Pylos recording religious offerings of grain, and replica stylus. Tablet made by me, stylus by Philip Boyes
In my last post I wrote about the apparent ‘problems’ in how the prehistoric Linear B script is used to write the Mycenaean Greek language, and how these are actually not ‘problems’ at all, but a compromise between accurate representation of the language and economy in the number of different signs in the writing signs – as demonstrated by the use of very similar orthographic strategies in how the modern Cherokee syllabary represents the Cherokee language. Today I want to look in more detail at how Mycenaean writers actually used the Linear B orthographic system, and what this can tell us about both their attitudes towards ‘correct’ spelling and the way(s) in which they were taught to spell in the first place.
The writing system used for the Native American language Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ Tsalagi Gawonihisdi) was invented by a Cherokee man called Sequoyah (ᏍᏏᏉᏯ Ssiquoya), a silversmith by profession, between c.1809-1821. It’s a syllabary of 85 signs, each standing for a syllable consisting of a vowel or a consonant plus a vowel, which was rapidly adopted by the Cherokee after its invention and is still in use today (the Cherokee language is endangered, with only c.2,000 first-language speakers, but the Cherokee Nation is workingto promote the learning of both the language and the syllabary). The story of how Sequoyah invented this writing system is a fascinating one in its own right, but also surprisingly relevant to the study of the Bronze Age Greek syllabary Linear B – read on to find out why!
Cherokee Syllabary chart (Mattie.walkerr, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
It's All Greek To Me 