| Abstrakt: |
The scholarly history of the Levantine alphabet centers on scribal literacies. Yet there is compelling evidence that the script was used and taught in other communities of text-makers: the artisans involved in text-creation in stone, metal, ceramic, ivory, and other writing surfaces involving technical tools and specialized knowledge. The present essay explores the evidence for the intersection of craft and literacy practices in the inscriptional and archaeological record with a focus on the Bronze and Iron Ages. The proposed "craft-literacy" approach makes several suggestions about how scholars of alphabetic inscriptions might better theorize about the transmission of alphabetic literacies in the process of craft-production and the dissemination of inscribed objects. To this end, the present essay sets the study of Northwest Semitic epigraphy in conversation with material cultural approaches to the study of literacy, specifically "artifactual literacies," an approach that evaluates the materiality of literacy and the ways in which textual-artifacts engage different audiences, and thereby participate in the transmission of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
