Tools of the Trade: Accounting Tokens as an Alternative to Text in the Cuneiform World
Small, geometric-shaped clay objects are a common find at settlements across West Asia. They were often overlooked in the past, in favor of more enigmatic clay finds such as figurines, seals, and tablets. Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s seminal work (1992) brought clay objects to the fore, arguing they w...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Chicago Press
2023
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| In: |
Bulletin of ASOR
Year: 2023, Volume: 390, Pages: 209-243 |
| Further subjects: | B
Administration
B clay objects B Mesopotamia B West Asia B bookkeeping B calculi B early historic B Accounting B tokens B prehistoric |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
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| 520 | |a Small, geometric-shaped clay objects are a common find at settlements across West Asia. They were often overlooked in the past, in favor of more enigmatic clay finds such as figurines, seals, and tablets. Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s seminal work (1992) brought clay objects to the fore, arguing they were mnemonic accounting tokens that evolved directly into the characters of cuneiform script and thus were replaced by writing at the end of the 4th millennium b.c. Evidence from excavations across West Asia increasingly demonstrates that the evolutionary narrative of writing as replacing tokens is too simplistic. Various pathways to complex administration were taken. A review of the evidence demonstrates that the advent of writing did not lead to the abandonment of prehistoric bureaucratic technologies. Tokens continue to be a crucial administrative aid at most sites—used along with clay tags, bullae, seals, sealings, and written texts—into the 1st millennium b.c. This article considers how and why nonliterate bureaucratic technologies remained useful tools of daily life in West Asia for as long as cuneiform was the dominant form of written script. It proves that the theorized trajectory of written texts replacing tokens in accounting is a gross oversimplification of the situation of administration in the early historic period. | ||
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