Writing as Material Practice

Kathryn E. Piquette is a Marie Curie COFUND Fellow at the Dahlem Research School, Freie Universität Berlin. Working within the Excellence Cluster TOPOI – The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations – her research revolves around early Egyptian and Near Eastern script and image, with emphasis on material practice and its impact on symbolic meaning. As a specialist in Reflectance Transformation Imaging, she is using this computational photographic method to investigate artefact surfaces for evidence of graphical production and consumption. She also carries out fieldwork in West Aswan, Egypt. Her recent publications include the co-edited volume Narratives of Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Literary and linguistic approaches (2011). She is a founding member of Digital Classicist Berlin and Honorary Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

Ruth D. Whitehouse is Emeritus Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Her research interests throughout her career have focussed on the prehistory of Italy and the West Mediterranean, concentrating on social archaeology and specifically on ritual and religion. Another major research interest is gender archaeology. Her publications include Underground Religion: Cult and culture in prehistoric Italy (1992) and edited volumes Gender and Italian Archaeology (1998), and (co-edited) Archaeology and Women (2007). In the last 10 years she has also pursued research into the early writing systems of Italy, with a focus on both the social context and the materiality of writing. She is a founding member of the Accordia Research Institute, devoted to the study of ancient Italy, and a general editor of its publications. Since 2007 she has been General Series Editor of the publications of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.