Undeciphered Tablets and Undeciphered Territories: A Comparison of Late Minoan IB Archives

In this article I follow Schoep’s points of evidence as presented in the first half of a recent article where she focuses on the Linear A evidence from various sites, and especially Haghia Triadha, Zakro and Khania. These tablets show considerable variation in various respects, mainly between the three ‘archives’ (simply here meaning tablet concentration). However, the differences between ‘archives’ to be comparable, it must be demonstrated that they play a structurally similar role in the respective administrations. The recording of commodities is comparable only when it is demonstrated that similar administrative stages for the same commodity are being considered. The way scribes work can be compared when the work of scribes who play similar roles in the respective bureaucracies is being compared. As we shall see below, however, most of the points of variation between the Linear A archives do not compare like to like. In this article most variations are explained either as results of the comparison between different parts or stages of similar centralized bureaucracies, or as minor and predictable differences between otherwise similar bureaucracies, such as scribal idiosynchracies, and differences of dialect.