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Agency in Ancient WritingEnglehardt, Joshua. Éditeur scientifique  Joshua D. Englehardt&#160;is profesor-investigador at the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos of El Colegio de Michoacán, a CONACYT Level I National Investigator, and codirector of the Mesoamerican Corpus of Formative Period Art and Writing. He specializes in Mesoamerican archaeology and epigraphy, with a research focus on the development of Mesoamerican writing systems in the Formative period and the correlation of emerging scripts with diachronic changes in material culture. He is the editor of&#160;Agency in Ancient Writing&#160;and coeditor of&#160;These "Thin Partitions"&#160;and&#160;Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica. "Through the lens of agency, contributors successfully rethink the nature of ancient texts. In so doing they ably demonstrate that when a new theoretical orientation is applied to a taken-for-granted category of data it invigorates both the data and our understanding of the past."—Marcia-Anne Dobres, University of Maine"Agency in Ancient Writing. . . is not only a welcome application of the famous theory of agency and structuration to early writing systems, but it affords a surprising but crucial opportunity to reassess the theory itself and to rehabilitate it from some of its more individuaistic and voluntaristic excesses."—Jack David Eller,&#160;Anthropology Review DatabaseIndividual agents are frequently evident in early writing and notational systems, yet these systems have rarely been subjected to the concept of agency as it is traceable in archaeology.&#160;Agency in Ancient Writing&#160;addresses this oversight, allowing archaeologists to identify and discuss real, observable actors and actions in the archaeological record.Embracing myriad ways in which agency can be interpreted, ancient writing systems from Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, China, and Greece are examined from a textual perspective as both archaeological objects and nascent historical documents. This allows for distinction among intentions, consequences, meanings, and motivations, increasing understanding and aiding interpretation of the subjectivity of social actors. Chapters focusing on acts of writing and public recitation overlap with those addressing the materiality of texts, interweaving archaeology, epigraphy, and the study of visual symbol systems.Agency in Ancient Writing&#160;leads to a more thorough and meaningful discussion of agency as an archaeological concept and will be of interest to anyone interested in ancient texts, including archaeologists, historians, linguists, epigraphers, and art historians, as well as scholars studying agency and structuration theory. List of Figures viiList of Tables xiForeword / Jennifer L. Dornan xiiiAcknowledgments xviiIntroduction: Individual Intentionality, Social Structure, and Material Agency in Early Writing and Emerging Script Technologies /  Joshua Englehardt and Dimitri Nakassis 1Part I: Agency in the Formation of Early Writing and Notational Systems1 The Mediated Image: Reflections on Semasiographic Notation in the Ancient Americas / Margaret A. Jackson 21 2 Bureaucratic Backlashes: Bureaucrats as Agents of Socioeconomic Change in Proto-Historic Mesopotamia / Clemens Reichel 453 Are Writing Systems Intelligently Designed? / Adam D. Smith 714 Agency in Death: Early Egyptian Writing from Mortuary Contexts / Laurel Bestock 95Part II: The Material Agency of Early Writing and Incipient Scripts5 Reembodying Identity: Seals and Seal Impressions as Agents of Social Change on Late Prepalatial Crete / Emily S.K. Anderson 1156 Performance, Presence, and Genre in Maya Hieroglyphs / Michael D. Carrasco 139 6 Contingency and Innovation in Native Transcriptions of Encrypted Cuneiform (UD.GAL .NUN) / J. Cale Johnson and Adam Johnson 165Part III: Agency through Writing and Early Texts7 Structuration of the Conjuncture: Agency in Classic Maya Iconography and Texts / Joshua Englehardt 1858 Inscriptions from Zhongshan: Chinese Texts and the Archaeology of Agency / Wang Haicheng 2099 Structuration and the State in Mycenaean Greece / Dimitri Nakassis 23110 Epilogue: Agency and Writing / Ruth D. Whitehouse  249References 257List of Contributors 289Index 293Editeur : Boulder : University press of ColoradoDate de parution : 2013Description matérielle : 1 vol. (XVIII-299 pages) :  ill., cartes, plans, jaquette illl. en coul. ; 24 cmBibliogr. p. 257-287. IndexISBN 978-1-60732-199-6 (rel.) : 79 $. - ISBN 978-1-60732-209-2 (élec.) : 63 $PARIS-BnF : Tolbiac - Rez-de-jardin - magasin : 2015-259054LE CAIRE-Bibliothèque IFAOPARIS-Collège France-EgyptePARIS-Médiathèque MQBDisponible en ligne (payant), url : &#60;https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19183&#62;.