Background
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise was born on August 10, 1933 in Ay, France. Daughter of Victor and Jeanne (Crabit) Besserat. came to the United States, 1965, naturalized, 1970.
anthropologist archaeologist historian mathematician university professor
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise was born on August 10, 1933 in Ay, France. Daughter of Victor and Jeanne (Crabit) Besserat. came to the United States, 1965, naturalized, 1970.
Educated, Ecole du Louvre, 1965. Doctor (honorary), Kenyon College, 2008.
Schmandt-Besserat has worked on the origin of writing and counting, and the nature of information management systems in oral societies. Her publications on these subjects include: Before Writing (2 vols), University of Texas Press 1992. How Writing Came About, University of Texas Press 1996.
The History of Counting, Morrow Junior.
1999; When Writing Met Art (University of Texas Press, 2007). And numerous articles in major scholarly and popular journals among them Science, Scientific American, Archaeology, American Journal of Archaeology, and Archaeology Odyssey.
Her work has been widely reported in the public media (Scientific American, Time, Life, New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor) She was featured in several television programs such as Out of the Past (Discovery Channel), Discover (Disney Channel). The Nature of Things (Canadian Broadcasting Company), Search for Solutions (Public Broadcasting Service), and Tell the Truth (National Broadcasting Company).
She retired in 2004 as Professor of Art and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
In her most recent book, When Writing Met Art (2007), Schmandt-Besserat investigated the impact of literacy on visual art She showed that, before writing, art of the ancient Near East mostly consisted of repetitive motifs. But, after writing, conventions of the Mesopotamian script, such as the semantic use of form, size, order and placement of signs on a tablet was applied to images resulting in complex visual narratives.
She also shows how, reciprocally, art played a crucial role in the evolution of writing from a mere accounting system to literature when funerary and votive inscriptions started to be featured on art monuments.
Schmandt-Besserat"s present interest is the cognitive aspects of the token system that functioned as an extension of the human brain to collect, manipulate, store and retrieve data. She studies how processing an increasing volume of data over thousands of years brought people to think in greater abstraction.
She also continues her research on Neolithic symbolism at the site of "Ain Ghazal, near Amman, Jordan.
Member American Oriental Society, Archeological Institute American (governing board 1983-1989), American Anthropol. Association, American Schools of Oriental Research, Centro Internationale Ricerche Archeologiche Anthropologiche e Storiche (Rome).
Married Jurgen Schmandt, December 27, 1956. Children: Alexander, Christopher, Phillip.