The Small Deaths of Maya Writing
| Dublin Core | PKP Metadata Items | Metadata for this Document | |
| 1. | Title | Title of document | The Small Deaths of Maya Writing - The Disappearance of Writing Systems |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Stephen Houston; Brown University; United States |
| 3. | Subject | Discipline(s) | Linguistics; History |
| 4. | Subject | Keyword(s) | ancient writing; Maya script; dead languages |
| 5. | Subject | Subject classification | P101-410 Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar; P901-1091 Extinct ancient or medieval languages |
| 6. | Description | Abstract | Death happens once to any organism, which lives and expires, not to be reborn unless by miracle. Whether writing systems ‘die’, finally so, was the question posed from various angles in a recent paper by the author and two colleagues, John Baines and Jerrold Cooper (Houston et al. 2003). The topic had seemed overlooked, so our essay probed the twisting fate of writing systems in extremis. We came to the conclusion that diminished functions of script, linkages to obsolete knowledge with which a script had become identified, and the physical expiration of script-users from the effects of war or disease led systematically to the obsolescence of certain writing systems. Most defunct scripts were replaced by writing systems regarde —at least at the time—as facilitators of a wider variety of uses. Histories differed: a few scripts, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, enjoyed long ‘lives’, decrepit only after three millennia; others, such as Rongorongo, travelled along much shorter paths. |
| 7. | Publisher | Organizing agency, location | Equinox Publishing Ltd |
| 8. | Contributor | Sponsor(s) | |
| 9. | Date | (YYYY-MM-DD) | 01-Sep-2008 |
| 10. | Type | Status & genre | Peer-reviewed Article |
| 11. | Type | Type | historical and methodological study |
| 12. | Format | File format | |
| 13. | Identifier | Uniform Resource Identifier | https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/view/19002 |
| 14. | Identifier | Digital Object Identifier | 10.1558/equinox.19002 |
| 15. | Source | Journal/conference title; vol., no. (year) | Equinox eBooks Publishing; The Disappearance of Writing Systems |
| 16. | Language | English=en | en |
| 18. | Coverage | Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.) |
Mayan empire;Mesoamerica, 3rd century BCE to 16th century |
| 19. | Rights | Copyright and permissions | Copyright 2014 Equinox Publishing Ltd |