Glossographia

Anthropology, linguistics, and prehistory

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Why paleography matters: solution

Feb 14, 2010 11:06am

Well, we haven’t had an answer, so I’ll give it to you: All of the numeral-phrases except the bottom right read CXLVII (= 147). I’ve highlighted every other character in red to emphasize the distinct characters, making this solution comprehensible if not obvious. The fact that you,...

Paleo-Eskimonymy

Feb 11, 2010 7:28pm

I don’t normally get too uptight about the names that archaeologists give to ancient humans: Lucy, Otzi, ‘hobbit’, whatever. However, I have a quibble about “Inuk”, the 4000-year old Paleo-Eskimo found in Greenland in the 1980s, and whose DNA was recently sequenced (see the article here from today’s...

Why paleography matters: clue 2

Feb 11, 2010 9:59am

Still no correct response to my puzzle, so here’s a second clue: The ‘words’ are Roman numerals, six characters in length. Filed under: Literacy and writing ...

Dresden Codex online

Feb 10, 2010 8:19pm

From David Stuart’s Maya Decipherment blog, news that the Saxon State Library of Dresden has published hi-res colour images of the Dresden Codex online. It is, of course, the most detailed and complex surviving account of Maya mathematical astronomy and an extraordinarily important document for our knowledge of...

Why paleography matters: a clue

Feb 10, 2010 10:26am

OK, we’ve only had one guess and no correct answers yet on my Doorworks puzzle/contest from yesterday, proving that a) paleography is technically challenging and important and b) I’m cruel and heartless. So, a clue (which regular readers might have guessed already): All four of the ‘words’ are...

Doorworks 4: Why paleography matters

Feb 9, 2010 11:17am

In case any of you were wondering why the study of handwriting matters, and why the elimination of the chair in paleography at King’s College London is a grave loss: Below is an image containing four discrete pieces of late medieval English writing (compiled together as a comparative collection)....

No country for old tongues

Feb 7, 2010 11:58am

Attn: Discovery News BBC News et al. We all know how obsessed you are with the oldest of anything. But please, stop. You are doing a grave disservice to languages by saying things like ‘A tribal language thought to have existed for 65,000 years has disappeared forever’ or ‘Languages in the Andamans...

Juvenile ethnopaleography

Feb 6, 2010 8:45pm

Ms. 1 (APTC 1) Arthur Chrisomalis, The Lines Construction paper. ff. 2. Unfoliated. 11×8.5 in. Bound at left with four staples. Dated 2010 (?) in hybrid numerical notation (see below). This manuscript is a juvenile work probably composed on 02/06/2010. There is textual and ethnographic...

World Loanword Database

Feb 4, 2010 7:11am

The World Loanword Database project (WOLD), edited by Martin Haspelmath and Uri Tadmor, is now online and freely available to users. It’s a remarkable resource compiled with the purpose of analyzing language contact at the lexical level. Over fifty linguists (including my colleague Martha Ratliff here at...

Paleography at KCL

Feb 3, 2010 8:02am

Over the last week there has been a groundswell of action in opposition to the decision to eliminate the paleography program at King’s College London, most significantly the position of the Chair of Paleography, Professor David Ganz, which is the only such position in the UK and perhaps in the...