Gabriel Gösta, Overmann Karenleigh A., Payne Annick (Eds.). Signs - Sounds - Semantics: Nature and Transformation of Writing Systems in the Ancient Near East

Ugarit-Verlag, 2021. — 237 p. — (Wiener Offene Orientalistik 13).This volume, entitled Signs – Sounds – Semantics and offered as part of the “Wiener Offene Orientalistik” series, presents eight essays that emerged from talks given at two workshops during the 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, which was held 16–20 July 2018 at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Although the workshops were initially conceived and presented independently, their shared focus on the nature and transformation of writing in the Ancient Near East made them eminently suitable for combined publication.
As both workshops did, the contributions in this volume explore several topical issues in investigating early writing systems: the relationship between language and writing; the influences and pragmatics that affect sign form, organization, meaning, and purpose; the techniques for and necessity of phonetic values; and the interplay of the cognitive processes, behaviors, and material forms in producing and interpreting writing. Cognitive processing in writing and reading is a specific focus in the contributions here, as it was in both workshops as well, and indeed, the addition of neuroscientific findings to current interpretational methods and theories promises to yield new insights in early writing systems.
The volume is organized in three parts that have been integrated across both workshops. Part I examines signs, meanings, and language, while Part II focuses on the pragmatics of signs and their production. Finally, Part III is concerned with the organization of lists.