Research
I am a Research Associate on the VIEWS Project (Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems), currently working on visual aspects of early Levantine alphabetic writing and especially ink writing and 'cursive' in Phoenicia. More broadly my interests include the archaeology of the relationship between writing practices, society and culture, and of social change. My field of interest is the East Mediterranean and especially the Levant, in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.
Publications
Writing around the Ancient Mediterranean: Practices and Adaptations, Oxford 2022, co-editor Philippa M. Steele.
Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit, Oxford 2021.
The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxford 2021, co-editors Philippa M. Steele and Natalia Elvira Astoreca.
Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, co-editor Philippa M. Steele.
PhD Thesis:
Social Change in 'Phoenicia' in the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age Transition. Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, 2013
Articles:
'The Wider World of Writing. Networks of people, practice and culture underpinning writing in Late Bronze Age Ugarit', Cambridge Archaeological Journal 33, 2023. 181-192.
'A comparative approach to methods of inscribing clay tablets: interaction and innovation in Cyprus and Ugarit’ in Angliker, E M and Bultrighini, I (eds.), Current Approaches to the Materiality of Texts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Turnhout 2023, 35-52. With Philippa M. Steele.
‘The magic of writing in the Late Bronze Age East Mediterranean’ in Steele, Philippa M. and Boyes, Philip J. (eds.), Writing around the Ancient Mediterranean: Practices and Adaptations. Oxford, 2022, 99-119.
‘Writing and Social Diversity in Late Bronze Age Ugarit’, Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 33, 2022.
‘Introduction: writing practices in socio-cultural context’ in Boyes, P J., Steele, P M. and Elvira Astoreca, N (eds.), The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxford 2021, 1-18. With Philippa M. Steele and Natalia Elvira Astoreca.
‘Towards a social archaeology of writing practices’ in Boyes, P J., Steele, P M. and Elvira Astoreca, N (eds.) The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxford 2021, 19-36.
‘Introduction: Issues in studying early alphabets’ in Boyes, P J. and Steele, PM. (eds.), Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, 1-14. With Philippa M. Steele.
‘When the Phoenicians Were Swedish: Rudbeck's Atlantica and Phoenician Studies’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 141, 2021, 749-766. With Annie Burman.
'Negotiating Imperialism and Resistance in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: The rise of alphabetic cuneiform’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 29, 2019: 185-199.
‘Variation in Alphabetic Cuneiform: Rethinking the ‘Phoenician’ inscription from Sarepta’ in Boyes, P J. and Steele, P M. (eds.), Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, 29-51.
'“The King of the Sidonians”: Phoenician Ideologies and the Myth of the Kingdom of Tyre-Sidon', Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 365, 2012: 33-44.
