Connecting the Dots: Counting, Writing, and the Beginnings of Civilization

This memoir recounts Denise Schmandt‑Besserat’s pioneering research into Neolithic clay tokens, proposed as precursors to writing. Blending personal experiences with archaeological discovery, it traces her decades of fieldwork and presents her influential argument that early accounting practices helped give rise to writing and civilization.

In 1978, Scientific American caught the world by surprise with an article about the miniature clay cones, spheres, disks, tetrahedrons, and other geometric-shaped artifacts recovered by archaeologists from most Neolithic (c. 7500 bc) trenches dug in the Middle East—but hitherto ignored. The small artifacts, now called tokens, were daringly presented as possible precursors of writing by a Franco-American archaeologist, Denise Schmandt-Besserat.

Almost fifty years later, in Connecting the Dots, Denise Schmandt-Besserat takes stock of her life and work: how she singlehandedly pursued her research, traveling alone through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran to locate the present whereabouts of tokens from scientifically excavated sites, subsequently spending long hours measuring, sketching, and taking notes on thousands of examples in dark attics or basements of museums, before enjoying the exotic Middle Eastern souks or bazaars.

Above all, as the last in the long series of Schmandt-Besserat’s publications, including Before Writing and How Writing Came About, Connecting the Dots is the capstone of her theory that the need for agricultural recordkeeping by the earliest farmers gave rise to counting, writing and, yes, civilization.

List of Figures and Tables

Foreword – Marcella Frangipane

A Note from a Student – Michael Erard

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Longing for a Challenge. Paris, 1959–1965

Chapter 2: Becoming American. Boston, Massachusetts, 1965–1971

Chapter 3: The Right Place at the Right Time. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965–1971

Chapter 4: Excavating Museums. The Middle East, 1971

Chapter 5: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Texas, 1972

Chapter 6: Making a Splash. The University of Texas at Austin, 1972–2004

Chapter 7: Something Unexpected

Chapter 8: Tokens Revolutionize Neolithic Symbolism

Chapter 9: Paradigm Shift

Chapter 10: Bringing Order to Chaos

Chapter 11: Eureka!

Chapter 12: The Data Revolution

Denise Schmandt-Besserat Publications

Index

• By (author) Denise Schmandt-Besserat