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Written Artefact Profiling Guide
Written ArtefactProfiling Guide

Photo: CSMC

Written Artefact Profiling Guide

Bone and seashell

CSMC Collection

Shoulder blade with Batak writing and symbols from Indonesia.

Animal bones, including elephant tusks and tortoise shells (mostly the lower part called plastron), as well as seashells can be used as writing supports without the need for any particular fashioning (vs e.g. bone Tablets or ivory folios in Pothis). They can be both carved or painted.

Examples can be found in virtually all cultures. Notably, bones and shells are together with rocks (see Tools) the earliest extant objects in human history to have been manipulated (one may say etched, rather than inscribed) so as to bear signs. For example, shells from Java (Indonesia) dating back to 500.000 years ago (Joordens et al. 2015) and white-tailed eagle talons from Croatia dating back to 130.000 years ago (Radovcic et al. 2015).

In historic times, a notorious case is surely that of the so-called “oracle bone inscriptions” (甲骨文, jiǎgǔwén) produced in particular between the fourteenth and the eleventh century BCE, at the time of the Shang dynasty (Keightley 1978, 6–9). Once cleaned from flesh and smoothed, ox scapulae and tortoise undershells were used for acts of pyromancy (called scapulimancy and plastromancy, respectively) that included some writing.