Books about Inscription from Amazon.com

The breaking of the Maya code has completely changed our knowledge of this ancient civilization, and has revealed the Maya people's long and vivid history Decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing has progressed to the point where most Maya written texts—whether inscribed on monuments, written in the codices, or painted or incised on ceramics—can now be read with confidence.

In this practical guide, first published in 2001, Michael D. Coe, the noted Mayanist, and Mark Van Stone, an accomplished calligrapher, have made the difficult, often mysterious script accessible to the nonspecialist. They decipher real Maya texts, and the transcriptions include a picture of the glyph, the pronunciation, the Maya words in Roman type, and the translation into English. For the second edition, the authors have taken the latest research and breakthroughs into account, adding glyphs, updating captions, and reinterpreting or expanding upon earlier decipherments.

After an introductory discussion of Maya culture and history and the nature of the Maya script, the authors introduce the glyphs in a series of chapters that elaborate on topics such as the intricate calendar, warfare, royal lives and rituals, politics, dynastic names, ceramics, relationships, and the supernatural world. The book includes illustrations of historic texts, a syllabary, a lexicon, and translation exercises. Illustrated in two colors throughout..
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The decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris some fifty years ago is the equivalent in the humanities of Crick and Watson's discovery of the structure of DNA. Today it belongs in the same rare class as Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the nineteenth century. The earliest European writing system that we can understand, Linear B dates from the middle of the second millennium BC. It was rediscovered by Sir Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who excavated clay tablets bearing this ancient script at Knossos in Crete in 1900. Obsessed with cracking Linear B, Evans kept the tablets to himself for some forty years but made little progress. After his death, other scholars tackled the decipherment, but it wasn't until 1952 that the secret was penetrated. Linear B was not an unknown language such as Minoan or Etruscan but actually an archaic dialect of Greek, more than five hundred years older than the Greek of Homer. Michael Ventris's later collaborator, the Cambridge classicist John Chadwick, told the story in his famous book, The Decipherment of Linear B (1958). But what of the man behind the decoding? Here Chadwick's book is exceptionally reticent, because in truth he hardly knew Ventris. Based upon hundreds of unpublished letters and other sources, including Chadwick's papers, Andrew Robinson's biography is the first book to tell the story of both the decipherment of Linear B and the man who broke the code. His research reveals a most intriguing person: a dazzling polyglot with an unorthodox upbringing and socialist tendencies who was also extremely private and lacking in confidence, and who died in a mysterious car crash in 1956 at the age of thirty-four. Ventris trained successfully as an architect, and his design methods shaped his decipherment work. But it was his hobby, Linear B, that would make him immortal. 20 b/w illustrations..
Price: $11.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An excellent pedagogy for critical thinking! In 1898, a farmer in northwestern Minnesota unearthed a large stone engraved with what appeared to be Norse runes carved in 1362. Could medieval Scandinavians have penetrated deep into mainland North America over a century before Columbus discovered the New World? Does the stone provide evidence that forces a rewrite of American history, or was it merely a well-executed hoax? In the absence of written records documenting a Norse expedition into Minnesota, most historians have dismissed what became known as the Kensington Runestone as a hoax. However, Kehoe approaches the question holistically. She examines not only historical and literary evidence, but brings in data from archaeology, geology, linguistics, and biological anthropology. She concludes that the stone's authenticity should not be dismissed as readily as it has been so far, even if that means rethinking deeply ingrained ideas about contact between Europeans! and indigenous Americans..
Price: $12.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Until the Rosetta Stone was finally translated and the decoding of hieroglyphic writing made possible, much of Egyptian history was lost. The author has done a masterful job of distilling information, citing the highlights, and fitting it all together in an interesting and enlightening look at a puzzling subject." —H. "The social and intellectual history here are fascinating. A handsome, inspiring book." —K.

Notable Children's Books of 1991 (ALA)
Notable 1990 Children's Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
Children's Books of 1990 (Library of Congress)
100 Books for Reading and Sharing (NY Public Library)
Parenting Honorable Mention, Reading Magic Award.
Price: $3.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Runes, Asatru, rune books, futhark, pagan, heathen.
Price: $15.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since the 1980s, tattooing has emerged anew in the United States as a widely appealing cultural, artistic, and social form. In Bodies of Inscription Margo DeMello explains how elite tattooists, magazine editors, and leaders of tattoo organizations have downplayed the working-class roots of tattooing in order to make it more palatable for middle-class consumption. She shows how a completely new set of meanings derived primarily from non-Western cultures has been created to give tattoos an exotic, primitive flavor.
Community publications, tattoo conventions, articles in popular magazines, and DeMello’s numerous interviews illustrate the interplay between class, culture, and history that orchestrated a shift from traditional Americana and biker tattoos to new forms using Celtic, tribal, and Japanese images. DeMello’s extensive interviews reveal the divergent yet overlapping communities formed by this class-based, American-style repackaging of the tattoo. After describing how the tattoo has moved from a mark of patriotism or rebellion to a symbol of exploration and status, the author returns to the predominantly middle-class movement that celebrates its skin art as spiritual, poetic, and self-empowering. Recognizing that the term “community” cannot capture the variations and class conflict that continue to thrive within the larger tattoo culture, DeMello finds in the discourse of tattooed people and their artists a new and particular sense of community and explores the unexpected relationship between this discourse and that of other social movements.
This ethnography of tattooing in America makes a substantive contribution to the history of tattooing in addition to relating how communities form around particular traditions and how the traditions themselves change with the introduction of new participants. Bodies of Inscription will have broad appeal and will be enjoyed by readers interested in cultural studies, American studies, sociology, popular culture, and body art.

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Price: $14.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This long-awaited companion volume to The Literature of the Sages, First Part (Fortress Press, 1987) brings to completion Section II of the renowned Compendia series, published cooperatively with Van Gorcum of Amsterdam.

The Literature of the Sages, Second Part, explores the literary creation of thousands of ancient Jewish teachers, the often- anonymous Sages of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Essays by premier scholars provide a careful and succinct analysis of the content and character of various documents, their textual and literary forms, with particular attention to the ongoing discovery and publication of new textual material.

Incorporating groundbreaking developments in research, these essays give a comprehensive presentation published here for the first time. This volume will prove an important reference work for all students of ancient Judaism, the origins of Jewish tradition, and the Jewish background of Christianity..
Price: $49.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]