Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

  1. NAMES AND THINGS


Alongside this proliferation of texts written for strangers with limited


but precise reading skills, there was a parallel expansion in the marking


of objects with the names of individual persons. These two tendencies


might seem contradictory at first, the one anonymizing objects of


exchange, the other personalizing possessions. It is possible to see


several ways in which the two practices might have fitted together.


First, the same general period of economic growth that was manifested


in increased production and exchange brought modest prosperity to


many sectors of society. Second, the need for readers evoked by the


increased use of writing increased the numbers of those who were familiar


with writing and so able to use it. Third, the very ubiquity of writing as


a source of authority of various kinds must have increased the sense


in which it was believed to be powerful and effective. Again there are


plentiful modern parallels in the proliferation of signage in public and


institutional space. Less easy to test is the possibility that the increasing


complexity of the Hellenistic Mediterranean, the higher levels of mobil-
ity, and the growing size of urban populations may have provided an


incentive to inscribe one’s identity on treasured possessions as an antidote


foranomie.


The practice of labeling one’s possessions is very ancient, of course,


and is still with us. Children today find that the capacity to personalize


objects is one of the most attractive features of writing when that


skill is first acquired. We still label more possessions than we expect


to lose. Presents are inscribed, books of condolence signed, and the


mystique of the autograph signature as a final validation is only just


beginning to be eroded by electronic media. Personal names are among


the oldest and commonest types of graffiti from the archaic Mediterra-


nean.^37 Writing is a powerful means of extending one’s self, of investing


it in objects and (through their use) of expanding one’s participation in


the world.


Writing is not the only means of doing this. A mass of recent Melanesian


anthropology has been concerned with the way the production of some art


objects serves as a means of dispersing personhood among those who use,


give, and receive them.
38
Dispersed personhood is one of the means by


which relationships are asserted and acknowledged, relationships that link


distant communities but also create authoritative accounts of past rela-


tions, in a word, of society. The materiality of the inscribed objects I have


been discussing means they, too, may be considered in this way, as objects


in which personhood is inscribed, stored, communicated and shared.
Objects of this kind are possessed by their owners in more than one sense.



  1. R. Thomas 1992, 56 61.

  2. Gell 1998 is most often cited; see also N. Thomas 1991.


60 Situating Literacies

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