Denise Schmandt-Besserat is Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Discoveries in the history of writing are rare, but Denise
Schmandt-Besserat made one in realizing that phonetic writing in
the West descends not from pictography, a view repeated everywhere,
but from abstract, nonphonetic, mostly noniconographic accounting
tokens used in Neolithic farming communities of the Near East
beginning from about 8000 B.C. A condensation of volume I of Before
Writing ...this book is a perfect production, utterly lucid,
thoughtfully illustrated, and thoroughly convincing.
*American Journal of Archaeology*
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