Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus

Philippa M. Steele is a Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Faculty of Classics and a Senior Research Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Following the award of a large European Research Council grant, she is the Principal Investigator and Director of the major five-year project Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS), managing a research team investigating writing in the ancient Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Levant. She has been the author and editor of a number of books and articles ranging over topics from ancient Cypriot language and culture to the historical study of the Mycenaean world and methodological approaches to the study of writing systems and ancient literacy. In 2015, she began a series of conferences devoted to ancient writing which are now being published as a series, the first volume, Understanding Relations Between Scripts, was published in 2017. She is currently working on the development of the Aegean syllabic scripts (including Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A and B) and the early Greek alphabet.

1. The advent of literacy on Cyprus; 2. Scripts and languages in geometric cyprus; 3. 'Understanding' undeciphered scripts and unidentified languages; 4. Visible languages and Cypriot identities; 5. Cypriot writing at home and abroad.