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The social context of literacy in Archaic Greece and Etruria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Simon Stoddart  and
James Whitley
Simon Stoddart
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge CB3 0AG
James Whitley
Affiliation:
British School at Athens, 52 Odos Souedias, Gr-10676, Athens, Greece
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Extract

In recent years much emphasis has been placed upon the effects of literacy in the transformation of the Mediterranean World between 800 and 400 BC. Alphabetic scripts have been seen by many, archaeologists and classicists alike, as one of the key factors that made many of the achievements of Mediterranean, particularly Greek, thought and culture possible. Alphabetic scripts encouraged widespread literacy, and widespread literacy was the necessary condition for what remains distinctive in Ancient Greek culture, namely the development of History, Philosophy and speculative Natural Science. Murray (1980: 96) is typical in his view that ‘Archaic Greece was a literate society in the modern sense.’ The work of Goody & Watt (1963) has done much to advance the view that many of the achievements of Mediterranean Society can be ascribed to, if not entirely explained by, this ‘technology of the intellect’. Their ‘autonomous model’ however, as Cartledge (1978: 37) has observed, comes dangerously close to technological determinism.

Type
Special section: Classical matters
Information
Antiquity , Volume 62 , Issue 237 , December 1988 , pp. 761 - 772
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1988

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