Tom Palaima

The University of Texas at Austin, Classics, Faculty Member

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Tom Palaima is Robert M. Armstrong Professor of Classics and founding director of the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (est. 1986) at the University of Texas at Austin. See: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/classics/faculty/palaimat for links to all his publications.A MacArthur fellow for his work with early writing systems, he has written over 130 scholarly articles, including four definitive explorations of the development of ruler ideology 1600-500 BCE in Greece and surrounding cultures. He is author/editor of ten books, nearly 350 public intellectual commentaries and feature pieces and over 100 book reviews. He serves on the editorial boards of The Dylan Review and Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici NS.

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Near Eastern and Aegean Texts from the Third to the First Millennia BC

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1998

A New Linear B Inscription from the Land Down Under: AUS HO(ME) Bo 2008

Wooden object. 15 x 8.5 cm. (maximum length and height); 5.0 cm. wide in middle; maximum thicknes... more Wooden object. 15 x 8.5 cm. (maximum length and height); 5.0 cm. wide in middle; maximum thickness 3.0 cm. Polished and tapering. Inscription made with a thin blade-like stylus not at all dissimilar to the 'exacto-blade' stylus used for actual Linear B clay tablets. Reverse completely devoid of writing. ' This object was found in the epichoric shrubbery on the grounds outside the J.H. Mitchell Theatre of Melbourne University at 3 AM March 29, 2008. At this time the discoverer, as is his wont at Aegaeum conferences, was in a slightly intoxicated state producing, as ably described by Helene Whitaker, "dislocation of the mind," from having imbibed just a drop, or two, of products from the Shelmerdine Winery following one of the many ample southern hemispheric feasts that were distributed amply throughout the DAIS conference. He was actually, at the time of chancing upon the inscribed object, trying to relocate his mind, a task that many view as comparable to the underworld labors of Sisyphus or the Nile River flowing upstream. Immediate use of his handy on-the-spot Carbon-14 testing kit proved inconclusive. Dendrochronological examination was frustrated by the absence of a saw and the hardness of the native wood. By employing smell, taste, touch, sight and sound, in the sensuous and sensitive manner proposed by Rachel Fox, it was determined that the object was made of wood cut from the Tamarind, Diploglottis Cunninghamii, a species of tree which once grew to heights of 60-80 feet in Queensland and New South Wales. It appeared to have been cut from a specimen slightly less than 16 years ago. The discoverer, plagued already in a Midas-like way with a preternatural knack-some would call it a curse-for chancing upon inscribed linear documents in out of the way places like Calvi,

Tom Palaima

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