The life and death of Greek local scripts: not so long durée ?
- Autores: Alan Johnston
- Localización: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité, ISSN 0223-5102, Vol. 124, Nº. 2, 2012
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
In this paper, I outline what I believe to be the salient aspects of the rise, and in particular the survival and demise of the individual epichoric or local scripts in the Greek world, c.750-350 BC. The Italian peninsular is perhaps only involved in this grammatological history to a minor extent after the initial reception of alphabetical writing, and therefore my intention is rather to detail the social life of the alphabet in the Greek world during the period and to suggest reasons for any changes or indeed lack of changes, in case such reflections should be of interest to those working in similar fields in Greater Etruria. Much has been written concerning such matters before, but I hope to consolidate extant bibliography and stress some nuances which have not as yet come to the forefront in research outside the specialised area of earlier Greek epigraphy. I will attempt to show that epigraphic norms in the Greek polis do have social validity, while at the same time external forces clearly are at work to undermine them. Why ?
