A Companion to Linear B - The University of Texas at Austin

§12.1.2.1.4 SCRIBES, SCRIBAL HANDS AND PALAEOGRAPHY 63
13, 21, 31, 32. Bennett’s plan has now been improved and corrected by Kevin
Pluta 52 (Figs. 12.15 and 16). Attention has been paid to find-spots, where possible,
at every site. 53 We shall discuss below some examples of the importance
of knowing the locations where tablets were found, but interested readers can
still profit by reading Palaima and Wright (1985), Scribes Pylos, 171-189, and
Pluta (1997).
§12.1.2.1.4. The way in which the scribes monitored the Pylian economy
In conjunction with the study of ‘hands’, the find-spots of the Pylos tablets
have enabled us to see how the tablet records were used within the operation
of the palatial centre at Pylos. 54 We have developed a sense of how the tabletwriters
used written records in monitoring what were fundamentally economic
activities. The tablets track the who, what, when, where and how of many different
items: raw materials, manufactured products, and objects — animate
(including livestock and human beings) and inanimate — of many kinds that
were of concern to the palatial centres and the regions over which they exerted
different levels of administrative, political, social, religious and even military
control.
We now find it possible to theorize with some fair degree of probability that
particular sets of tablets were written elsewhere and then delivered to the central
archives (Rooms 7 and 8). 55 In some instances we know where the delivery
baskets in which tablets were transported were placed when they arrived in the
central archives. This was grid 52 (Fig. 12.15), where were found a surprising
number of clay transport-basket labels. One of these, Wa 1271, was directly
related to tablets of the Sh series that were the one set of tablets also found in
this location. It seems that, when the Palace of Nestor and the archives complex
was destroyed by fire, the Sh tablets were still in their basket to which Wa 1271
had been affixed. The appearance of the Sh tablets indicates that they were very
moist, to the point of drooping from the force of gravity when handled during
writing and placement in their basket. Like other arriving sets of tablets, they
had been temporarily set in grid 52, an ideal location to allow the scribes who
worked in grids 51, 61 and 62 to access them conveniently. 56 Other tablet sets
52 PLUTA 1997.
53 The Knossos tablets present many challenges precisely because clear and accurate records of
find spots and strata for our different groups of tablets are not available to us (DRIESSEN 2000;
FIRTH 1997 and 2000-2001; LANDENIUS-ENEGREN 2008; Scribes Cnossos; SKELTON 2008).
54 Scribes Pylos, 171-189.
55 Rooms 7 and 8 in Fig. 12.16. See PALAIMA – WRIGHT 1985; Scribes Pylos, 182-187.
56 PALAIMA 1996a.