Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role of Writing in Tracing Social Interaction

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

Writing is more than a visual medium for communicating information - it is also a cultural practice that must be understood in context. Researchers studying the transmission or spread of cultural practices in the ancient past rely largely on material and physical remains. Archaeology is especially well-suited to address these questions because it combines a critical engagement with material culture with a concern with change and interaction over time and space. In this context, writing presents an ideal case for exploring cultural transmission because of the material traces that it leaves and because its physical aspects are often ignored at the expense of its more abstract message. Mallory Matsumoto (Brown University) will undertake dissertation research to understand the production and transmission of writing. In addition to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology, epigraphy, and anthropology, this work will demonstrate how interaction in one cultural context may affect another, an issue relevant to understanding both the past and the present. In addition to contributing to current understanding of pre-Columbian Maya civilization, the results will be especially relevant to contemporary Maya communities given their current efforts revive the hieroglyphic script as a symbol of identity and cultural heritage. This dissertation research will examine if and how the networks through which writing is transmitted overlap with other contexts of cultural exchange. Its case study will be the ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing system, which was used for over 1500 years in areas of what are now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Critically, the writing system was shared among pre-Columbian Maya communities who were not only separated by space and time, but also were never politically unified. Although the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs has advanced significantly in recent decades, scholars still do not understand how the writing system developed and spread. The investigator will analyze the form of Maya inscriptions and the hieroglyphs they contain to reconstruct which settlements were sharing which writing techniques, how these patterns changed over time, and how they related to interactions in other contexts like politics, warfare, or trade. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.