March 19, 2015
Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, eds.Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America. Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia and Colloquia. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oakes Research Library and Collection, 2012. 422 pp.; 55 color ills.; 136 b/w ills. Cloth$65.00 (9780884023685)
Their Way of Writing is the material record of “Scripts, Signs, and Notational Systems in Pre-Columbian America,” a symposium held at Dumbarton Oaks in October 2008. Framing contributions by symposiarchs Gary Urton (chapter 1) and Elizabeth Hill Boone (chapter 15) contain thirteen case studies from both Mesoamerica (chapters 2–9) and the Andes (chapters 10–14). Accompanied by black-and-white and color illustrations—including several never-before-published images from the Andes—these contributions vary widely in their level of legibility to non-experts.
Journal of Art Historiography 