Goodbye Cambridge, γεια σου Αθήνα!

Goodbye Cambridge, hello Athens!

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

“The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B: Interpretation and Scribal Practices”: coming soon!

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!

WCCWiki comes to Cambridge

Votive figurines from the Temple of Hera at Vibo Valentia, Calabria. Katherine McDonald via Wikipedia

Women are currently represented by less than 18% of the biography pages on Wikipedia, and in academia it’s even worse – just 12% of the subjects of pages about academics are women (data from here). I’ve written before about joining WCCWiki, a project run by the Women’s Classical Committee aiming to improve the representation of women classicists, archaeologists, and other scholars of the ancient world on Wikipedia, which people of all genders and backgrounds (not just women, and not just classicists!) are encouraged to join. I’m organising a training session and editathon for anyone interested in finding out more about this project and learning how to edit Wikipedia on May 8^th, 1:30-4:30pm, in room 2.03 of the Cambridge Classics Faculty. (This room is on the second floor; step-free access is available via a lift, and a wheelchair-accessible toilet is available on the ground floor near the lift. Please note the doors to access the lift and toilet are not automatic; we can provide help with these if required).

AWLL12: Diversity of Writing Systems

Association for Written Language and Literacy logo (written in English, Russian, Greek, and Chinese)

A year and a half ago, I attended my first Association for Written Language and Literacy conference in Nagoya, Japan; last month, my colleague Robert Crellin and I were privileged to bring the Association’s 12th meeting (AWLL12) to the Cambridge Classics Faculty. AWLL is for researchers working on writing from any perspective, from theoretical analyses of how writing systems are structured and how they encode language, to experimental work on how readers and writers actually learn and use writing systems. The theme of ‘Diversity in writing systems: embracing multiple perspectives’, was intended to reflect the diversity in members’ approaches and disciplinary backgrounds, as well as in the geographical and chronological spread of the writing systems they study – writing systems discussed at AWLL12 covered a time-span of several thousand years and are/were used in Europe, the Middle East, Egypt, Ethiopia, West Africa, India, South-East Asia, Japan, Korea, China, and Central and North America: presentation topics ranged from ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphic to present-day Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, and Yoruba via early modern English shorthand, Mayan hieroglyphic, and much much more.

Another writing systems conference

It’s going to be a busy time for linguists in the Classics Faculty in March – not only is there the conference I’m organising on “Diversity of Writing Systems“, but there’s also going to be another conference about writing, this one on “Exploring the Social and Cultural
Contexts of Historic Writing Systems“. Organised by my colleagues in the CREWS Project, it looks like a wonderful programme, and I’m looking forward to attending (and chairing a session)! Programme and registration details here:

https://wp.me/p7mx5R-1fX

Diversity of Writing Systems – programme

I’m very pleased to now be able to share the programme for the Association of Written Language and Literacy’s 12th International Workshop on ‘Diversity of Writing Systems’ (AWLL12), taking place in the Cambridge Faculty of Classics on March 26-28th 2019. It’s been very exciting putting together such a wide-ranging programme, and I’m really looking forward to the conference! All the information on how to register for the conference is also available via the AWLL12 website:

via Programme

On the Edge: Writing in Roman Britain

I’ve just given a talk for the Cambridge Festival of Ideas about the different kinds of written evidence that survive from Roman Britain and what they can tell us, so thought I’d write up a summary here for any interested readers who couldn’t come to the talk! The title “On the Edge” was chosen to fit in with the theme of this year’s festival, “Extremes”, and to reflect the position of Britain on the very edge of the Roman Empire (a journey from Rome to London in October could take up to 40 days), and for that matter the position of many of the surviving texts, which come from Hadrian’s Wall in the north of Britain, on the very edge of the Roman-controlled part of the island. A major theme of the talk was how, despite this remote position, Britain was very well connected with the rest of the Roman world, as the evidence of many of the written documents shows.

Hadrian’s Wall. Photo by Michael Hanselmann via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Ancient writing in the Cambridge Festival of Ideas

Cambridge-based readers of this blog may be interested to know about two events focusing on ancient writing that I’m involved in as part of the Festival of Ideas (which starts today, October 15th, and runs until the 28th):

Raiders of the Secret Scripts: this is a free, drop-in event for adults at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, 7-9pm on Friday 19th. Have a go at deciphering inscriptions to follow the trail around the gallery (all necessary information provided!), try your hand at writing a curse tablet, find out more about different ancient writing systems – and have a glass of wine at the same time! I’ll be there to help out and answer your questions, along with colleagues of mine from the CREWS project.

On the Edge: Writing in Roman Britain: this is a lunchtime talk in the Classics Faculty on Wednesday 24th, 1.15-2pm; it’s also free, but prebooking is required. The festival’s (fairly loose) theme is “extremes”, so I thought it would be fun to look at the written texts from one of the extreme edges of the Roman Empire. Britain has produced a remarkable range of documents – from gravestones to letters, legal documents to curses, and much more – including some remarkable recent finds of writing-tablets from the City of London. Come along to find out more about what these documents are, who wrote them, and what they tell us about life in Roman Britain!

 

Some advice on applying to Junior Research Fellowships

It’s the time of year when applications for Junior Research Fellowships – research-only positions based in an Oxford or Cambridge college, intended for people who are just finishing or have recently finished a PhD – are starting to get going, and as a current JRF (at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge), I’ve been getting various requests for advice on the application process, and I thought it might be helpful to post a bit of advice here – the process can be pretty opaque, especially for those who aren’t currently at Oxford or Cambridge and so don’t necessarily have supervisors or colleagues with direct experience of assessing JRF applications. Also, since no-one likes writing job applications, I’m including a picture of a dog to help improve the situation slightly (as you can see, she doesn’t like job applications either).

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.