The Archaeology of Verbal and Nonverbal Meaning:: Mesopotamian domestic architecture and its textual dimension: Mesopotamian domestic architecture and its textual dimension

A major argument of this book is that nonverbal meaning plays a fundamental role in the functioning of human societies, thus rejecting the predominance of textual meaning and ethnocentric/Eurocentric models currently employed in the interpretation of past behaviour and architecture. By using the unique evidence from Mesopotamian domestic space where both house layouts and family archives were recovered, as well as ethnographies from modern Near Eastern societies, Paolo Brusasco investigates how verbal and nonverbal meaning interrelate in the archaeological past. In line with Peirce, Wittgenstein and Derrida, as well as recent research in corporeal semantics and social psychology, the book claims that nonverbal, spatial signs have a profound bearing on ancient textual meanings. Moreover, through the evidence of house clay models, house projects, actual houses and archives, the author shows how different semiotic systems may produce alternative perspectives of the world, while the linguistic elaborative power of processing nonverbal signs is also explored. This book contributes to understanding how we should critically use social techniques and ethnographic analogy to interpret the archaeological past, and it will be a vital resource for all those interested in the interaction between language and the material world. "Mesopotamian houses excavated at Ur and Nippur represent a unique archaeological context for the analysis of the interaction of verbal and nonverbal sign systems in that archaeologists can combine archival evidence of the III-II millennium BC with well-preserved house layouts. This work provides a general framework for the interpretation of other sites where textual evidence is absent or not in context. Although the aims of the book are multiple, the main objective is theoretical: The author goes beyond the interpretation of Mesopotamian domestic sociology and offers a semiotic theory of verbal and nonverbal meanings, useful for archaeology in general"--Publisher's web site Front Cover Title Page Copyright Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Theories of meaning and archaeology Chapter 2: Nonverbal meaning as implicit deixis in archaeology Chapter 3: Verbal and nonverbal sign interaction in Mesopotamian domestic space Chapter 4: Dynamic interaction of semiotic systems through the house cycle Chapter 5: The spatial dimension of legal and technical discourse Chapter 6: The ethnographic dimension of verbal and nonverbal semiosis Chapter 7: The body in language: towards a theory of the relation between verbal and nonverbal meaning in archaeology References Index