Stephen D. Houston has spent decades studying the nature of writing
systems, which "are so very basic as nodes of connection among many
aspects of human experience," such as language, communication,
identity, technology, and the recording of memory. "One of the
misconceptions about writing is that a particular system of script
comes into existence, remains the same, and then `dies,'" said
Houston."This notion radically and wrongly dehistoricizes systems
of writing. We now know that scripts exist as fluid sets of
practices, shifting over long periods of time and in response to
changing historical circumstances, conditions of learning, and
arenas of patronage and use." For this advanced seminar "The Shape
of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change," 10 specialists
convened to address "the question of what happens between the
origins of a writing system and the time of eventual `script
death,' or extinction." Although scholars are close to
conceptualizing the way scripts emerge and pass into obsolescence,
they are still far from explaining how scripts maintain themselves
over time or how and why they change when they do. "This is
unfortunate: writing is one of the central cultural productions in
human history, yet its many modulations and shifts seem largely to
be taken for granted, without need for explanation. Writing is a
pivotal intermediary in many human transactions. But it needs to be
brought back into the fold of anthropology, not as a marginal
specialty but as an indispensable tool by which knowledge is
transmitted." The seminar, conceived as a capstone to a 10-year
project to resuscitate and renovate the study of past writing
systems within anthropology, brought together experts in script
traditions including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Latin writing and
Mediterranean alphabets, cuneiform, South Asian scripts, ancient
Roman script, and premodern Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and
Mesoamerican writing systems. Using cross-cultural comparisons, the
participants sought to understand the forces that influence the
courses of writing systems. Houston emphasized the importance of
examining context:"What is the physical, temporal, social, and
cultural setting for the way the message of writing is accessed?
That is where history enters the picture, within a place of
contingency, challenge, and opportunity." Among the questions
driving the discussions were the following: What processes affected
formal changes in scripts? What agents or actors were involved in
such shifts, either actively or passively? How was literacy
achieved, then futhered or restricted? How did aesthetics and the
use of script shape each other? What influence did technologies
have on script forms? How was writing "gendered" or "aged" or
"classed"?And what are the linkages between images and script? Of
particular interest was the issue of generational transfer. "This
brings us to matters on the cutting edge of anthropology:What is
the role of being a child, or an adolescent? What do we learn? When
and why do we learn it? This is what's involved in making sure that
script survives more than that initial act of innovation, so that
it's used again and again, across generations," Houston said.
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