Recent approaches to early writing

Abstract

This paper considers the argument of literacy and the state in the light of the relative absence of civic inscriptions from the archaic Italian world. It argues that whilst this absence is so pronounced as to be difficult to attribute entirely to archaeological invisibility, the very act of writing and dedicating can be reconfigured in such a way as to refer to a claim to participate in civic society, and a claim which is not simply reducible to a display of power, but operates also as a technology of the self.