Description
Book SynopsisRecord-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies provides a concise and up-to-date survey of early record-making and record-keeping practices across the world. It investigates the ways in which human activities have been recorded in different settings using different methods and technologies.
Based on an in-depth analysis of literature from a wide range of disciplines, including prehistory, archaeology, Assyriology, Egyptology, and Chinese and Mesoamerican studies, the book reflects the latest and most relevant historical scholarship. Drawing upon the authorâs experience as a practitioner and scholar of records and archives and his extensive knowledge of archival theory and practice, the book embeds its account of the beginnings of recording practices in a conceptual framework largely derived from archival science. Unique both in its breadth of coverage and in its distinctive perspective on early record-making and record-keeping, the book provides the only updated
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1.How Records Began: Representation and Persistence; 2. Marks of Ownership and Sealing; 3: Records, Accounting, and the Emergence of Writing in Ancient Mesopotamia; 4. Records and Writing in Other Early Societies: Egypt, the Aegean, China, and the Americas; 5. Creating and Storing Written Records and Archives: The Proliferation of Records in South-west Asia, Egypt, and Greece; 6. Orality and Literacy: Confidence in Records; 7. Orality, Record-making, and Social Action; 8. Concluding Thoughts: Archival Science and Early Records
