PhD thesis now online!

Speaking of publications that have appeared recently, the PhD thesis I completed last year is now available online! It’s titled ‘The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B’ and is a study of the 14 Linear B syllabic signs (out of 87) whose sound-values are still uncertain. Spoiler alert: by the end of the thesis, they generally aren’t going to be any more undeciphered than they currently are – but (hopefully) I’ve made some progress in understanding how they fit into the script as a whole and their possible values, as well as using them in a case-study to look at how palaeography (the study of the form of script signs, especially as used by different scribes) can be used to talk about wider issues such as how scribes were trained or what the date(s) of the Linear B documents are. Interested readers can find the thesis (plus supplementary catalogues) on the Cambridge University Repository or my Academia.edu page.

Also, as a bonus, check out this excellent article entitled ‘Classicists Name Their Pets‘ (does exactly what it says on the tin, with cute pictures!)

New book – Understanding Relations Between Scripts

I’m very pleased to announce the publication of a conference held here in Cambridge a couple of years ago on ‘Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems’. It’s edited by my colleague Pippa Steele, and features chapters on a wide range of topics relating to the writing systems used in prehistoric Crete (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, and Linear B) and Cyprus (Cypro-Minoan, Cypriot Syllabic). I have a chapter in it looking at various issues to do with the development of the Linear B script; equally importantly, there’s a picture of the conference cake I made!

More ancient music!

For fans of reconstructions of ancient music, here’s a post by a friend about a recent reconstruction of an ancient Greek tragic chorus – complete with a link to a podcast of the piece’s first performance!

Greek Tragedies were as much musical as theatrical performances. Much of the text uttered by the Chorus, and some by individual characters as well, was sung. The ancient tragedians were as much composers as writers, creating both the texts and the musical settings. Indeed, in Aristophanes’ Frogs, when the ghosts of Aeschylus and Euripides fight […]

via The Music of Tragedy — historiai

More news on the Vindolanda writing tablets

I recently shared news of a newly-discovered writing tablet from the Roman fort of Vindolanda: now the excavation team have released a press release and it turns out they’ve found a whole cache of 25 tablets, all written in ink, some of which they’ve already been able to (partly) read. More information will have to wait until the tablets have been conserved and photographed, but for now here’s the press releasehere’s the press release (with some nice photographs!)

School visits to the Faculty of Classics

For any teachers who might be readers of this blog, the Faculty is taking bookings now for school visits during the next academic year – groups of Key Stages 3-5 students from maintained schools can visit the Museum of Classical Archaeology, listen to a talk by a Classics lecturer, and tour a college, plus there’s a free lunch on offer! (and help with travel expenses is available too). Students don’t have to be studying any particular topics, just to be interested in learning more about the ancient world.

Check out the Faculty’s outreach site here, and if you’re a teacher interested in bringing your students, talk to our outreach co-ordinator Jennie Thornber (jlt39 [a] cam.ac.uk; 01223 767044).

Reconstructing ancient music

I’ve just been introduced (via a post shared by our Faculty library) to the European Music Archaeology Project, who are reconstructing all sorts of different ancient musical instruments and then playing them. Check out their Youtube channel for a long list of videos of instruments from prehistoric and classical Europe and the Middle East – or here are a couple of classical ones, an ancient Greek aulos (double flute) and some Etruscan trumpets!

 

A new writing tablet from Vindolanda!

The Vindolanda Trust has tweeted this picture of a writing tablet found yesterday in the current excavations at the Roman fort:

More tablets from the Vindolanda excavations today, this one is a stylus tablet. Great find. #Vindolanda pic.twitter.com/q9h6uSzvWQ

— Vindolanda Trust (@VindolandaTrust) June 20, 2017

The tablet looks beautifully well preserved – in the picture you can clearly see the indentation in the middle which would have held the wax for writing on (unlike most of the tablets found at Vindolanda, which were written in ink). We’ll presumably have to wait until the tablet is cleaned and conserved to find out whether there are any traces of writing preserved on the wood – which happens when the stylus went right through the wax and scratched the wood underneath – and whether they’re at all readable (as some of the stylus tablets found in London have been). Fingers crossed…