Cambridge Aegean Archaeology Group conference

Yet another announcement of an event I’m speaking at…but this time it’s a two-day conference with 30 other people also taking part! The Cambridge Aegean Archaeology Group‘s conference on ‘Connections, Collaborations, and Current Research’ is taking place in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research on June 14-15. I’ll be speaking about the ways in which Mycenaean scribes edited and changed their texts and what this can tell us about their writing processes – something I’ve blogged a bit about here before – and I’m particularly excited about the two other talks in the epigraphy panel, which are going to be about the processes of preservation affecting the survival (or not) of the Linear B tablets and other Bronze Age documents, and about the use of digital tools for epigraphic research, collaboration, and public engagement. But there are also going to be a huge range of other talks on the themes of ‘Animals and Society’, ‘Cities and Landscapes’, ‘Rethinking Material Culture’, ‘Contextualising Connectivity’, and ‘Bodies and Burials’, plus keynotes on the recent excavations on the island of Keros and connections between monumental burial traditions around the Black Sea region. It should be an excellent couple of days – anyone who’d like to attend (from Cambridge or elsewhere!) can register for free here up until June 1st, and the full programme is here.

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Linguistics baking: Egyptian hieroglyphic

It’s a tradition for the Cambridge classical linguists that in Easter (summer) term, instead of our usual research seminars, we all get together to learn a bit about an ancient language that most of us don’t usually study, and to try to read through a few inscriptions. It’s become equally traditional that I provide refreshments for these reading classes in the form of an inscribed cake. This term, my colleague Robert Crellin from the CREWS Project has been teaching us all some Middle Egyptian, and so I’m pleased to present my latest linguistic baking project, Egyptian hieroglyphic cake:

Conference announcement: Diversity of Writing Systems

Last year I wrote about attending a conference in Japan organised by the Association for Written Language and Literacy – I’m now excited to be able to announce that I’m co-organising the AWLL’s next conference, to be held in Cambridge in March 2019 on the theme of ‘Diversity of Writing Systems: Embracing Multiple Perspectives‘. It’s open to researchers working on writing in any academic discipline – not just linguistics, but psychology, education, sociology, archaeology, digital humanities, computer science and technology, and any others I might not have thought of! To give some idea of the range of topics we’re aiming to include, our two keynote speakers are Kathryn Piquette from UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities, who works on Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern writing and art and on developing and applying digital imaging techniques, and Sonali Nag from the University of Oxford, whose research focuses on literacy acquisition and language development, particularly in South and South-East Asian writing systems and languages.

If you’re a researcher working on any writing system from any perspective, please head over to the conference webpage and check out the call for papers – I’m already looking forward to seeing what a wide range of abstracts we’re (hopefully) going to receive!

 

Caius Schools Prizes: Language in Lego, and more

My college, Gonville & Caius, runs a series of annual competitions for Year 12 students in UK schools, and this year’s linguistics competition challenges students to come up with a language based around Lego! As the competition announcement says,

 

The term ‘language’ can refer to any coherent systematic communication system. Most of the time we encounter language that is spoken or expressed in writing; but language may also be expressed using other mediums — examples would include sign language and Braille. This year the Caius Linguistics Challenge will be to develop a communication system using Lego bricks (or similar) where the meaning of the language will be encoded in how the bricks are connected together.

Colouring in the past

Every February, Cambridge plays host to a festival called “E-luminate“, which the organisers describe as “a celebration of the infinite possibilities created by light at the intersection of art and science” – as well as talks, concerts, and workshops, the most popular feature is always the illuminations on various buildings in the centre of town. One of these is on the outer wall of my college, Gonville & Caius: called “The Colours of Caius College“, it illuminates part of the facade in bright multi-coloured lights:

The decipherment of Linear B

Now that the Codebreakers and Groundbreakers exhibition is over, I’m able to make my catalogue chapter, ‘The Decipherment: People, Process, Challenges‘, available here for anyone who’d like to read it (click on the link for a PDF file)! It’s about the process by which the Linear B script was deciphered, the main people involved – Emmett L. Bennett, Alice Kober, Michael Ventris, and John Chadwick – and the remaining difficulties involved in reading and interpreting the documents written in this script.

Readers may also be interested in seeing some of the correspondence between Ventris and Chadwick that’s quoted in the chapter – PDFs of a selection of their letters are available on the website of the Mycenaean Epigraphy Group (the research group I’m part of in the Cambridge Faculty of Classics), and you can view them here.

I hope you enjoy the chapter, and if anyone has any further questions about Linear B and the decipherment after reading it, please ask me in the comments!

Last chance to see Codebreakers and Groundbreakers!

Just a quick reminder for any Cambridge-based readers that this week is the last chance to see the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Codebreakers and Groundbreakers exhibition about the decipherment of Linear B and WW2 codebreaking, which is finishing on Sunday Feb 4th! It’s been incredibly popular, and I’m told the catalogue has even completely sold out – for anyone who’s interested in reading more about the process by which Linear B was deciphered, and the people involved, I’ll be putting my catalogue chapter up here once the exhibition has finished, so check back for that next week!