Denise Schmandt-Besserat

Denise Schmandt-Besserat

Denise Schmandt-Besserat (born August 10, 1933 in Ay , Champagne , France ) is a French-born American professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas in Austin . Her focus is the archeology of the Middle East. She researched the origins of writing and mathematics and published various books on these topics.

Schmandt-Besserat studied at the École du Louvre in Paris. From the 1960s she went on study trips to the Middle East as an archaeologist. Around 1970 she realized for the first time that the small clay figures she called tokens (e.g. in the form of spheres, discs, cones, cylinders), which were found throughout the Middle East in cultural layers before the invention of writing, were long puzzles tasks, tools for an old number system from the period between 8000 and 3000 BC Are (which was partly already on the base 60). They represent a certain number of goods, often in a cover with the seal of the owner, and parts of the early cuneiform symbolism arose from them by noting their shape in lists on clay tablets in a next step. In 1974 her first publications appeared, which she made known to the wider public with articles in Scientific American, Discovery (and later as a frequently interviewed expert on television programs such as the Discovery Channel). In their opinion, the cuneiform writing system arose from these ancient counting systems, i.e. writing from mathematics. In other books she also investigated the cognitive influence of the writing system, for example on the emergence of literature and art in Mesopotamia.

In 2008 she was also involved in excavations at Neolithic sites in Ain Ghazal near Amman in Jordan .

Schmandt-Besserat has been a full professor in Austin since 1988 and retired in 2004 (Professor Emerita). She is an honorary doctorate from Kenyon College, received the Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement, the Holloway Teaching Award, the Eugene Kayden Press Book Award, and the Hamilton Book Award. She was honored as "Outstanding Woman in the Humanities" by the American Association of University Women .

Schmandt-Besserat is married to Jürgen Schmandt, of German descent, and from 1971 to 2001 he was a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

Fonts

• When Writing Met Art - From Symbol to Story , University of Texas Press 2007 (popular science)
• How Writing Came About , University of Texas Press 1996 (popular science, chosen by American Scientist as one of 100 science books that made the century)
• Before Writing: From Counting to Cuniform , 2 volumes, University of Texas Press 1992
• The History of Counting , Morrow, 1999 (for young people, followed by The History of Writing )
• Vom Ursprung der Schrift , Spektrum der Wissenschaft, December 1978, pp. 4-13 (corresponding to the Scientific American article 1978)

Web links

• Homepage
• From the origin of writing
• Interview on her children's book History of Counting
• How Writing Came About