Pippa Steele | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)

Pippa Steele

Research Fellow at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College.

From April 2016 to March 2021, director of the European Research Council funded project 'Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems' (CREWS). See the project blog at https://crewsproject.wordpress.com/

From October 2012 to March 2016, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (held at Cambridge), working on a project entitled 'The History of the Greek Language in the Eastern Mediterranean During the First Millennium BC'. Previously Lumley Research Fellow in Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, 2010-13.

In May 2014, gave the Evans-Pritchard Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford, on a theme of 'Society and Writing in Ancient Cyprus' (and now working on the manuscript of the arising monograph).

For further information on publications, see the CV section. Please feel free to get in touch if you cannot find an article or review I have written, and I will see whether I am able to send an offprint.

Research interests include the scripts and languages of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean; Mycenaean Greek, the Linear B documents and the Mycenaean administration; language contact in the ancient world; ancient Greek epigraphy and dialectology.

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Project by Pippa Steele

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems is an ERC-funded project based in the Fac... more Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems is an ERC-funded project based in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. You can read more about the project on the CREWS blog at https://crewsproject.wordpress.com/

Books by Pippa Steele

University of Cambridge. Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first... more University of Cambridge. Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first volume in this series, bringing together ten experts on ancient writing, languages and archaeology to present a set of diverse studies on the early development of alphabetic writing systems and their spread across the Levant and Mediterranean during the second and first millennia BC. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it sheds new light on alphabetic writing not just as a tool for recording language but also as an element of culture.

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

This book is published under a CC BY licence. This excludes illustrations and other material owned by third parties, which remain the copyright of their original owners.

Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus, Cambridge, 2018

From its first adoption of writing at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, ancient Cyprus was ho... more From its first adoption of writing at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, ancient Cyprus was home to distinctive scripts and writing habits, often setting it apart from other areas of the Mediterranean and Near East. This well-illustrated volume is the first to explore the development and importance of Cypriot writing over a period of more than 1,500 years in the second and first millennia BC. Five themed chapters deal with issues ranging from the acquisition of literacy and the adaptation of new writing systems to the visibility of writing and its role in the marking of identities. The agency of Cypriots in shaping the island's literate landscape is given prominence, and an extended consideration of the social context of writing leads to new insights on Cypriot scripts and their users. Cyprus provides a stimulating case to demonstrate the importance of contextualised approaches to the development of writing systems.

Chapter 1 available with open access here: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284465

Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017, 2017

Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017 ISBN: 978178570... more Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017
ISBN: 9781785706448, Oxbow Books
http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/understanding-relations-between-scripts.html

Details

Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems arises from a conference held in Cambridge in 2015. The question of how writing systems are related to each other, and how we can study those relationships, has not been studied in detail and this volume aims to fill a gap in scholarship by presenting a number of case studies focused on the writing systems of the Bronze Age Aegean. These include Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, used predominantly in Crete and mainland Greece, as well as the Cypro-Minoan script of Cyprus. Most of these systems (the only major exception being Linear B) remain undeciphered to some degree but we nevertheless have considerable evidence for their development and use.

Each contributor focuses on a different theoretical problem and/or set of scripts. Important questions include: How and why did writing emerge in Crete in the Middle Bronze Age? What is the relationship between writing and art? Why did different writing systems co-exist with each other? What changes were made when a new system was developed from an old one? Can our understanding of how different systems are related to each other help us to reconstruct the values of script signs? The contributors tackle such questions by employing a variety of methods, from epigraphic and palaeographic analysis to typological comparison and contextual study.

The result is a coherent volume that will not only enrich our understanding of the ancient Aegean writing systems in particular, but will also provide an important example for future studies of writing across the world.

Table of Contents

List of figures
Preface
Abbreviations

Chapter 1. Introduction: the Aegean writing systems
Philippa M. Steele

Chapter 2. Another beginning’s end: secondary script formation in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean
Silvia Ferrara

Chapter 3. Cretan ‘Hieroglyphic’ and the nature of script
Roeland P.-J.E. Decorte

Chapter 4. Linear B script and Linear B administrative system – different patterns in their development
Helena Tomas

Chapter 5. Reconstructing the matrix of the ‘Mycenaean’ literate administrations
Vassilis Petrakis

Chapter 6. From Linear B to Linear A: the problem of the backward projection of sound values
Philippa M. Steele and Torsten Meißner

Chapter 7. Processes of script adaptation and creation in Linear B: the evidence of the ‘extra’ signs
Anna P. Judson

Chapter 8. Script comparison in the investigation of Cypro-Minoan
Miguel Valério

Chapter 9. Is there anything like a Cypro-Minoan 3 script?
Yves Duhoux

Chapter 10. Script and language on Cyprus during the Geometric Period: an overview on the occasion of two new inscriptions
Markus Egetmeyer

Bibliography

This pioneering volume approaches the languages and scripts of ancient Cyprus from an interdiscip... more This pioneering volume approaches the languages and scripts of ancient Cyprus from an interdisciplinary point of view, with a primarily linguistic and epigraphic approach supplemented by a consideration of their historical and cultural context. The focus is on furthering our knowledge of the non-Greek languages/scripts, as well as appreciating their place in relation to the much better understood Greek language on the island. Following on from recent advances in Cypro-Minoan studies, these difficult, mostly Late Bronze Age inscriptions are reassessed from first principles. The same approach is taken for non-Greek languages written in the Cypriot Syllabic script during the first millennium BC, chiefly the one usually referred to as Eteocypriot. The final section is then dedicated to the Phoenician language, which was in use on Cyprus for some hundreds of years. The result is a careful reappraisal of these languages/scripts after more than a century of sometimes controversial scholarship.

Cambridge Classical Studies series, Mar 2013

This volume offers a new and interdisciplinary treatment of syllabic writing in ancient Cyprus. A... more This volume offers a new and interdisciplinary treatment of syllabic writing in ancient Cyprus. A team of distinguished scholars tackles epigraphic, palaeographic, linguistic, archaeological, historical and terminological problems relating to the island's writing systems in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, from the appearance of writing around the fifteenth century down to the end of the first millennium BC. The result is not intended to be a single, unified view of the scripts and their context, but rather a varied collection that demonstrates a range of interpretations of the evidence and challenges some of the longstanding or traditional views of the population of ancient Cyprus and its epigraphic habits. This is the first comprehensive account of the 'Cypro-Minoan' and 'Cypriot syllabic' scripts to appear in a single volume and forms an invaluable resource for anyone studying Cypriot epigraphy or archaeology.

Papers by Pippa Steele

American Journal of Archaeology, 2015

Boyes, P. J., Steele, P. M. and Elvira Astoreca, N. (eds.) 2021. The Social and Cultural Contexts... more Boyes, P. J., Steele, P. M. and Elvira Astoreca, N. (eds.) 2021. The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices. Oxford, Oxbow.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, 2019

From Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, edited by P. J. Boyes and P. M.... more From Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, edited by P. J. Boyes and P. M. Steele. Oxford, Oxbow, 1-14.

The paper cannot be uploaded here until December 2019 due to copyright restrictions, but I do hav... more The paper cannot be uploaded here until December 2019 due to copyright restrictions, but I do have a limited number of offprints that I can send to interested scholars.

Linear B was only one of a series of related writing systems. It bears a close relationship with ... more Linear B was only one of a series of related writing systems. It bears a close relationship with two earlier scripts in use in Crete during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and a more distant – but nevertheless very significant – relationship with the syllabic systems of Cyprus in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Most of these other scripts are considered to be undeciphered, with the exception of the Cypriot Syllabic script of the first millennium bc, which like Linear B was used to record the Greek language.

Jasink, E.M., Weingarten, J. and Ferrara, S. (eds.) Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas. The semantics of a-literate and proto-literate media, Periploi 9, Firenze., 2017

Please feel free to get in touch if you cannot find an article or review I have written, and I wi... more Please feel free to get in touch if you cannot find an article or review I have written, and I will see whether I am able to send an offprint.