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Faculty of Classics

 

Biography

Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Classics, and Principal Investigator of the UKRI-funded project 'Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems' (VIEWS, grant no. EP/X028240/1)

Research

As PI of the VIEWS project, current research focuses on the study and classification of writing systems around the ancient Mediterranean and beyond, with particular attention to their visual aspects. Previous publications have mainly focused on languages and writing systems of Cyprus and the Aegean.

Publications

Key publications: 

Books

Writing around the Ancient Mediterranean: Practices and Adaptations, Oxford 2022, co-editor Philip J. Boyes.

The Early Greek Alphabets: Origin, Diffusion, Uses, Oxford 2021, co-editor Robert Parker.

The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Oxford 2021, co-editors Philip J. Boyes and Natalia Elvira Astoreca.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, co-editor Philip J. Boyes.

Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus, Cambridge 2018.

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

A Linguistic History of Ancient Cyprus: The Non-Greek Languages, and their Relations with Greek, c.1600-300 BC, Cambridge 2013.

Syllabic Writing on Cyprus and its Context, Cambridge 2013.

Articles

In press: ‘Greece and Cyprus: regional approaches to the development of writing systems, traditions and practices’ in Alonso Déniz, A. (ed.) Contacts linguistiques en Grèce ancienne : diachronie et synchronie, MOM Éditions.

In press: A comparative approach to methods of inscribing clay tablets: interaction and innovation in Cyprus and Ugarit’: in Bultrighini, I. and Anglicker, E.M. (eds.) Current Approaches to the Materiality of Texts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Brepols. With Philip J. Boyes.

‘Material entanglements of writing practices in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus’ in Steel, L. (ed.) Exploring Materiality in the Bronze Age, special issue of Sustainability 12 2020, 1-17. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410671)

‘Script and literacy’ in Lemos, I.S. and Kotsonas, A. (eds.) A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, Oxford (Blackwell Companion) 2019, 247-69.

'The development of Greek alphabets: Fluctuations and standardisations’ in Steele, P.M. and Boyes, P.J. (eds.) Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxford 2019, 125-49.

‘Linear A and Linear B: Structural and contextual concerns’ in Nosch, M-.L. and Landenius Enegren, H. (eds.) Aegean Scripts. Proceedings of the 14th Mycenological Colloquium 2-6 September, Copenhagen 2015 Incunabula Graeca Vol. CV, 1, Rome 2017, 99-114. With Torsten Meißner.

‘Writing ‘systems’: Literacy and the transmission of writing in non-administrative contexts’ in Jasink, E.M., Weingarten, J. and Carraro, F. (eds.) Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas, Periploi 9, 81-100 - in press.

‘From Linear B to Linear A: The problem of the backward projection of sound values’ in Steele, P.M. (ed.) Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems, Oxford 2017, 93-110. With Torsten Meißner.

'A linguistic approach to population movements to ancient Cyprus' in Maguire, R. and Chick, J. (eds.) Approaching Cyprus, Cambridge 2016, 2-17.

‘Aegean and Cypriot script reforms: Ruptures and continuities’, BICS 59.1 2016, 136-7.

'Distinguishing between Cypriot scripts: Steps towards establishing a methodology’, Kadmos 53 2014, 129-48.

'The /d/, /t/, /l/ and /r/ series in Linear A and B, Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary', forthcoming in Pasiphae 8 2014, 189-96.

'The Greek Writing Systems', in G.K. Giannakis (ed.) Encyclopedia of Greek Language and Linguistics, Leiden 2013/4.

'The Diversity of the Cypro-Minoan Corpus' in Carlier, P. et al. (eds.) Études mycéniennes 2010. Actes du XIIIe colloque international sur les textes égéens, Pisa-Rome 2012, 537-544.

''Legality' and Mycenaean Scribes' in Kyriakidis, E. (ed.), Proceedings of the International Colloquium “The Inner Workings of the Mycenaean Bureaucracy”, University of Kent, Canterbury, 19-21 September 2008, Pasiphae 5, Pisa-Rome 2011, 119-26.

'Eteocypriot: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence', in Georgiou, A. (ed.), Cyprus: an island culture. Society and Social Relations from the Bronze Age to the Venetian Period, Oxford 2011, 122-32.

''Gaps' in Literacy: Social responses to economic crisis in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean', Archaeological Review from Cambridge 26.1 2011, 53-63.

'A New Archaic and Possibly Cypriot Inscription from Cilicia', Kadmos 49 2010, 127-32. With Markus Egetmeyer.

'Methodology in Mycenaean Prosopography: The Use of Names as Evidence', Kadmos 48 2009, 93-106.

'A Comparative Look at Mycenaean and Near Eastern Bureaucracies: 'Bilateral' Documentation in the Linear B Archives?', Kadmos 47 2008, 31-49.

Teaching and Supervisions

Research supervision: 

Available for supervision on topics with relevance to the VIEWS project (particularly writing systems of the ancient Mediterranean).

Graduate supervision and examination in Greek and Latin linguistics and epigraphy and Mycenaean epigraphy, language and history

Principal Investigator of Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems
Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College
Director of Studies at Wolfson College

Contact Details

Magdalene College
Cambridge
CB3 0AG
pms45@cam.ac.uk
01223 335096
Takes PhD students
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations

Latest news

Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2024

18 October 2024

The Faculty is delighted to announce that both Dr Lea Niccolai and Dr Henry Spelman have been awarded Philip Leverhulme Prizes in the 2024 competition. Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “Now in its twenty-third year, this scheme continues to attract applications from extraordinarily high...

Elen Wynne Vanstone Award

3 October 2024

The Faculty would like to congratulate Sólveig Hilmarsdóttir for winning the The British Federation of Women Graduates' Elen Wynne Vanstone Award for her work Talis homo qualis oratio: social status and its connection to the language of Roman writers. Sólveig works on the interface between Latin linguistics and Latin...

Exhibition awarded 5 stars

23 July 2024

The new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Paris 1924: Sport, Art, and the Body , Co-curated by Classics' Carrie Vout has been awarded 5 stars by the Guardian. "Timed to coincide with next week’s return of the Olympics to the French capital – is a revelation from first to last. You soon begin to realise that those Games...

Dr Richard Duncan-Jones FBA 1937-2024

19 May 2024

The Faculty is saddened by news of the death of Dr Richard Duncan-Jones FBA FSA. He had been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College since 1963 where he was a college lecture in Classics and Director of Studies for many years.