CREWS at the Cambridge Science Festival 2017!

It’s been a busy week for the CREWS Project. We’ve just held our first conference – Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets – which we’ll be writing more about soon, but before that, last weekend we took part in the Cambridge Science Festival at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

The Science Festival is a major event giving the public the chance to find out more about the research that goes on at Cambridge. There are countless talks and events all across the University, aimed at a broad range of audiences. In particular, the Science Festival attracts families and small children, so we were keen to be involved and to share our enthusiasm for ancient writing.

Reminder: Opportunity to join the CREWS team!

 

Just to remind you that there is a bit more than a week left to submit applications for the second Research Associate post on the CREWS project (deadline 21st November). See more HERE.

Introduction: Natalia Elvira Astoreca

Hello everyone! My name is Natalia Elvira Astoreca and I’m the new PhD student of the CREWS project. I just started two weeks ago but this new adventure looks very exciting already. During the next three years I will be focusing my research on the origins of the Greek alphabet – or rather the Greek alphabets, because in the early years there were numerous different local systems used in different areas. The other day I was talking with an old friend about Classics and my field of research and she told me “it is so interesting and exciting to know where words come from!” And so I answered “well, I’m trying to find out where letters come from.”

I know it sounds like I’m doing research in something that has been studied before, but I believe that we don’t understand in depth how the invention of the Greek alphabet really was – if we ever get to understand it. Most of the previous studies about the Greek alphabet tried to figure out when it was created, where or how Greeks adapted the Phoenician letters and their shapes to write their own language. The Greeks themselves were very conscious about where their alphabet was taken from: Herodotus called it φοινικήια γράμματα, that is, Phoenician letters.

Phoenician writing. Kilamuwa inscription, 9th century B.C. (Image taken from: University of Southern California)

CREWS Research Associate Post 2

I am pleased to announce that the job advert for the second Research Associate on the CREWS project has now appeared. You can find all the details here:

University of Cambridge Job Opportunities: Research Associate on the CREWS Project (Fixed Term)

Like the first Research Associate post, this has a fixed term of four years, beginning in March (or at the latest 1st April) 2017. Again the successful applicant will conduct research on a pre-determined aspect of the project, in this case the development of writing systems used to write North West Semitic languages in the second and early first millennia BC. This will involve using a variety of methods to study Ugaritic, Phoenician and related writing systems with a view to developing our understanding of their inception, structure and usage. This may include, for example, comparison of their sign inventories in relation to the phonological systems they represented, analysis of palaeographic variation, typological study of inscribed objects and consideration of features such as alphabetical order and direction of writing.

 

The closing date is 12.00 noon (GMT) on Monday 21st November. Please consult the Further Particulars, which can be found from the page linked to above, for more details on how to apply.

 

We are looking forward to welcoming a new member to the CREWS team!

 

 

 

 

Introduction: Philip Boyes

Hello! I’m Philip Boyes and I’m absolutely delighted to be joining the CREWS Project as a Research Associate from November 2016. I’m going to be looking at the Ugaritic writing system, its emergence and its context of use. Ugaritic is a fascinating Late Bronze Age adaptation of the existing cuneiform writing systems used across the Near East. Instead of each sign representing a syllable, as had traditionally been the case, Ugaritic is an alphabetic system (though one where only consonants are represented and not vowels) and was used to represent the local language of the city of Ugarit.

 

An abecedarium from Ugarit.

 

At the heart of my approach is the idea that we should explore changes in writing systems like this as we would any other example of social change – and that means getting to grips with the social context in as much detail we can, looking at how the creation and use of the Ugaritic script is linked to every aspect of society and culture, from politics and the economy to social status, gender and other forms of social identity. The only way to do this is to draw on every kind of evidence that’s available to us – not just the texts found at Ugarit, but also the archaeological evidence, iconographic representations, historical documents and more..

Ruins at Ugarit – Photo by Loris Romito, from Wikipedia. CC BY-SA

This bringing-together of different kinds of evidence is for me one of the most exciting aspects of the CREWS Project. In my more recent academic career I’ve mainly been an archaeologist and ancient historian: my PhD research was on social change in Phoenicia (the coastal region south of Ugarit, roughly equivalent to modern Lebanon) and I’ve been lucky enough to excavate at the Hittite site of Kilise Tepe in Turkey and at the Phoenician African colony of Carthage, as well as a spell as a commercial archaeologist based in Salisbury (you can spot me in a couple of episodes of Time Team!). Before that, though, my background was in Aegean prehistory, Linear B epigraphy and comparative linguistics, and I’ve maintained my interest in linguistics and writing systems even when they haven’t been my main research topics. Archaeology and linguistics aren’t studied together all that often and I’ve always been extremely interested in how they can shed light on each other and improve our understanding of both. I’m really looking forward to being able to bring together these different strands of my career on this project.

I’ll be writing again soon, once I’ve started my research. In the meantime, if you’d like more from me, I’ve blogged for Res Gerendae on things as diverse as lettuce in Sumerian love poetry, Greek and Roman sea monsters, and Classics in Doctor Who. My own blog, which will cover similar things that don’t fall directly within the scope of the CREWS Project, is Ancient Worlds.

 

~ Philip Boyes (soon to be Research Associate on the CREWS project)

 

 

CREWS News: New team members!

 

Finally the time has come for the exciting project news that I have been waiting to tell you all about! I am delighted to announce that the CREWS project is welcoming two new team members.

 

Dr Philip Boyes will be joining the team on 1^st November as a Research Associate, and will work on the social context of writing at the Late Bronze Age city of Ugarit. Coming from a background of Levantine history and archaeology, the project will benefit greatly from his interdisciplinary approach to developments in writing and their relationship with other sorts of social change.

 

Natalia Elvira Astoreca just joined the team a few days ago as the project’s PhD student, and is going to be working on the early development of the Greek alphabet. With previous experience of research on Cypriot writing and Greek epigraphy, she is going to consider questions such as why and how the early Greek alphabet displayed such a high degree of regional diversity, and how it was related to other alphabetic systems.

 

I am very excited to be working with Philip and Natalia, and looking forward to see the project grow and develop as we conduct our research together. In the meantime you can read about Philip and Natalia on the project’s ‘About’ page HERE.

 

We will be back soon with more posts about writing in the ancient world, including one from Philip introducing his research. Fun times are ahead for the CREWS project!

 

 

~ Pippa Steele (Principal Investigator of the CREWS project)

CREWS on the BA Blog

A post has just gone live on the British Academy’s blog about the CREWS project:

INTRODUCING A NEW INTERNATIONAL PROJECT ON ANCIENT WRITING

 

The post is a sort of personal reflection (hence the picture!), explaining how the CREWS project was inspired by my previous research during my time as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. Please follow the link above if you would like to read more.

 

~ Pippa Steele (Principal Investigator of the CREWS project)

 

Reminder: Research Associate Post

You wait for a fortnight and then three CREWS project blog posts come along at once…

This one is just to remind anyone interested in applying that we are currently advertising for a Research Associate on the CREWS project, with a deadline of 1st August.

Please see the previous blog post on this topic for more information: CREWS Research Associate Post.

Bringing the CREWS Project to YOU

The new issue of Pan European Networks’ Science and Technology magazine (Issue 19, June 2016) features a 3-page spread on the CREWS project.

 

If you would like to read more about the remit and the aims of the project – and why ancient writing systems and the people who used them are worth studying – then you can read the whole article for free online. Just click on the link below, and the article is on p72-4.

ARTICLE: The ABCs of History

In conjunction with the appearance of the article, I also did a fifteen-minute interview with Pan European Networks to say a little bit about the basis for the project’s research and how people can get involved with it, as well as the importance of European funding for endeavours like this one.

You can read the interview online here:

INTERVIEW: Set in Stone

These two links offer a great way of finding out a bit more about what we are planning to do with the CREWS project. There will undoubtedly be more such features that I will of course share (when someone asks me to enthuse on the subject of ancient writing systems, I find it hard to say no!), and in the future some more definite ideas about how YOU can get involved in the project.

 

~ Pippa Steele (Principal Investigator of the CREWS project)

CREWS Research Associate Post

I am pleased to announce that the job advert for the first Research Associate on the CREWS project has gone live today. See here on the Faculty of Classics website:

Faculty of Classics Jobs and Vacancies: Research Associate ‘Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems’ Project (CREWS)

The successful applicant will conduct research on a pre-determined aspect of the project, namely the context of writing in ancient Ugarit, specifically the social and cultural background against which the innovation of a new writing system took place. S/he will also conduct comparative studies, comparing the context of Ugarit with that of other examples of contemporary or near-contemporary written culture (for example in the Near East, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Aegean, Egypt); the choice of comparanda may depend in part on previous research experience. S/he will take up the post on 1^st October 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter, and will work on the project for four years.

 

 

For more information, you may visit the link above or click HERE to visit the University’s job listing.

The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon (BST) on Monday 1^st August 2016.