Anthropology Assignment help-Writing Systems CAMS 109 Y Spring 2018
Writing Systems CAMS 109 Y This is a 70 point test, which constitutes 35% of your final grade.
1. Offer a detailed description of the different approaches to the invention of writing, its
historical causes, and its various economic and ideological contexts in the four instances of
pristine writing systems. Make sure to address the following points:
(a) The apparent dichotomy between administrative uses of early writing (as in Early
Mesopotamia) and its ideological and/or symbolic dimensions (especially in Early China,
Ancient Egypt, and Mesoamerica). Explain how dramatic such an opposition may or may not
be.
(b) Karl Polanyi and substantivist economists argue that pre-industrial economies are not
predicated on a market model but rather on systems of reciprocity and redistribution. In such
systems, the predominant characteristic of all economic activities is their embeddedness in noneconomic
(kinship, social, political, religious) institutions. Within such a historical and
anthropological paradigm, try to recast the aforementioned alleged opposition between the
administrative and the ideological views on the etiology of early writing.
(c) Concerning the ideological functions of early writing, explain the role of lists, as well
as the social and political importance of memorialization. Shed light on this specific deployment
of writing within the interplay between power relations and discourses of authority. Moreover,
explain how writing contributes to articulate the ideological mechanisms of hegemony on the
part of elites within the context of the formation of early states.
(d) As it pertains to the ideological functions of writing, discuss how the mostly political
factors mentioned in point (c) may relate to the seemingly symbolic elements of an early corpus
such as the Shāng oracle bones. Trace the lines of continuity and/or discontinuity –in terms of
both contents and apparent functions– of the divinatory texts from Anyang in the Shāng period
and inscribed bronzes dating to the Western Zhōu Dynasty.
(e) In regard to the administrative utilization of writing, provide a succinct overview of
materials from the very early attempts at recording names, locations, and/or quantities (or
numbers), not only in what would eventually become pristine systems, but also in areas in which
writing seems to have never developed (the Inca empire) or in which it did not become an actual
system (the Aztec empire).
Provide sufficient evidence to support every point you make, in the form of both specific
examples and references to your readings.
40 points. A minimum of 7 pages.
2. Wang uses the term proto-writing (after Nissen et al. in Archaic Bookkeeping) to refer
to “graphic recording systems” that would predate or prefigure “full writing” (see p. 4 of his
book). Address in detail the theoretical implications of such a hypothetical category, and pay
particular attention to the following issues:
(a) As opposed to other semiotic systems, writing systems are characterized by being bound to specific languages. What then would be the status of such “graphic recording systems”
vis-à-vis writing systems and other semiotic systems in general? In view of Peirce’s
classification of signs, how would “graphic recording systems” relate to icons, symbols, and/or
indexes?
(b) What is the role of phoneticism in the opposition between these alleged “graphic
recording systems” and “full writing”? Wang (p. 123) argues as follows:
“Phoneticism is not the real difference between early recording systems (e.g., the protocuneiform,
U-j, and Mesoamerican pictographic traditions) and ‘true writing’ narrowly
defined. The real difference is the intention to represent speech.”
What sort of criticism could be leveled against Wang’s statement in light of the definition of a
writing system as a language-bound semiotic system? Note that instances of phoneticism are
inherently language-bound as well.
(c) Wang labels a number of Mesoamerican materials and sources as “pictorial”; e.g.,
household census & land registers in the Códice de Santa María Asunción, and lists of rulers of
Tenochtitlan. How does this category (“pictorial”) relate to “graphic recording systems” and to
“writing (systems)”? In cases of clear phoneticism –as in the spelling of the place name
Mapachtépec with the iconic depiction of a hand & a bunch of moss in the Codex Mendoza–
how clear and tenable is the distinction between pictorial record and writing?
(d) We argue that, instead of distinguishing between “graphic recording systems” and
“full writing,” one could refer instead to writing vs. writing systems. The latter would develope
(become systematized) through progressive standardization stemming from increasing and
extensive use. Nevertheless, this distinction exhibits some shortcomings. Explain these pitfalls;
e.g., variable standardization of spelling conventions in traditions with fully developed writing
systems.
(e) If standardization plays a role in the systematization of writing, then what is the role
of scribal education in the development and the function of writing systems in early states? You
should make explicit mention of the difference in the quantity and the nature of our sources
concerning scribal training in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Americas.
30 points. A minimum of 5 pages.
