690 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Before 'Writing, vol. 1: From Counting to Cuneiform. By Denise SchmandtBesserat . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Pp. xv + 269; illustrations, notes, index. $60.00. The earliest ceramics are pinch-formed simple geometric solids, generally 1-3 centimeters across, made in lower Mesopotamia circa 8,000 b.c. Production of similar spheres, cones, disks, cylinders, and tetrahedra along with other increasingly complex shapes continued for five thousand years. After studying some 10,000 of these “tokens,” contexts in which they were found, and textual and art evidence, Denise Schmandt-Besserat concludes that they were components of a cognitive system, a technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, and retrieving data. In Before Writing, she theorizes that they repre sent a transition from tallies to concrete counting to abstract numbers and facilitated the invention of writing. Settled farming became the norm in lower Mesopotamia about 8000 b.c., and a new economy and social order were based on animal husbandry and storing grain. Schmandt-Besserat proposes that those responsible for planning production and distribution adapted a tradition inherited from Paleolithic times: the modification of mate rials to convey thought. They formed clay tokens in distinctive shapes to represent quantities of grain and livestock. By the fourth millen nium, more complex shapes were used to designate manufactured commodities such as bread, fabrics, metals, and tools. About 3700 b.c., in further refinement of the system, sets of tokens were wrapped in clay “envelopes.” Two hundred years later, exteriors of envelopes were marked to designate the tokens enclosed—a step toward writing. About 3100 b.c., convex clay tablets were formed and impressed with the shapes of tokens. On some tablets, in addition to these impressions, a stylus was used to trace the earliest examples of pictographic script (p. 198). Tokens, envelopes, and tablets are found in elite tombs and temple precincts. In Schmandt-Besserat’s theory, they functioned in the collection of dues and tribute necessary to sustain emerging city-states. Tokens were first used in a system of “concrete” counting. Later, markings on envelopes and tablets fused notions of product and number. Eventually, markings began to symbolize abstract numbers, a transition that extended over hundreds of years. An impressed sign on a tablet would denote a number, an incised pictograph the type of product. The same repertory of symbols continued from envelopes to tablets; similar tablets were made until the Christian era (p. 154). Early political power concurred with the development of reckoning technology (p. 178). Numbers and writing share the same prehistory; they evolved together to meet the needs of a ranked agricultural society where an elite class supervised a redistribution economy. In this hypothesis, Schmandt-Besserat departs from earlier thinking, which identifies urbanization as the catalyst for accounting and writing. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 691 The author’s clear, jargon-free discussion is presented in a hand some, helpfully illustrated book (vol. 2 is a catalog of her primary data). Copious endnotes aid further investigation, although the lack of a bibliography is regrettable. Scholars interested in early symbolism and cognitive development and in early culture and technology, as well as students of near eastern archaeology, will find much that is useful and provocative here. Mona Phillips Dr. Phillips, art director at Phillips Stained Glass Studio for many years, received her doctorate in the history of technology and science at Case Western Reserve University. She has taught history of technology and science at Notre Dame College of Ohio, and is writing a book on the design of British megalithic monuments. Medieval Fortifications. By John R. Kenyon. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Pp. xvi + 233; illustrations, glossary, bibliography, in dex. $45.00. There has been of late a plethora of scholarly works on medieval fortifications. Castellogists, as they like to call themselves, have been busy. In addition to the book reviewed here, monographs by N. J. G. Pounds, M. W. Thompson, William Anderson, A. J. Taylor, D. J. Cathcart King, and Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams have also been published in the last seven years. To these should be added at least four collections of articles and three journals, Château Gaillard, Fort, and...
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Oct 1, 1993
Phil Gunby 
Open Access