The Archaeology of Verbal and Nonverbal Meaning: Mesopotamian Domestic Architecture and its Textual Dimension

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. Contents: 1) Theories of meaning and archaeology; 2) Nonverbal meaning as implicit deixis in archaeology; 3) Verbal and nonverbal sign interaction in Mesopotamian domestic space; 4) Dynamic interaction of semiotic systems through the house cycle; 5) The spatial dimension of legal and technical discourse; 6) The ethnographic dimension of verbal and nonverbal semiosis; 7) The body in language: towards a theory of the relation between verbal and nonverbal meaning in archaeology.