“Decipherment in Progress: Ancient Scripts”, a series of themed talks coordinated by Andreas Stauder, Director of Studies at EPHE-PSL

Writing systems, as tools of language notation, serve as visual communication mediums and cultural identity markers, representing the ancient societies that conceived, transmitted and adapted them.
In 2025, as part of our ongoing commitment to ancient scripts and languages, ILARA is hosting a series of nine themed talks devoted to ancient scripts that are currently being deciphered.
The themed talks will cover decipherment of scripts used in the ancient Near East, Africa, Europe, Asia, and even the Pacific. The presentations will showcase the variety of methods used in decipherment, often in combination: philology, historical linguistics, distributional and statistical techniques, computational approaches, and more. They will also illustrate the diversity of challenges and contexts involved, including the material and social contexts of writing, the different types of scripts, the level of knowledge we may have about the underlying language, and the limitations of decipherment. In some cases, the question even arises as to whether we are dealing with writing at all, or with another type of graphic communication system.
The talks, delivered by international experts in their fields, are open to the public and free to attend. They will take place on Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. from March to December 2025, at the conference hall of Ulm site of the Collège de France (3 rue d’Ulm, Paris 75005), both on site and via videoconference. All lectures (excluding the Q&A sessions) will be available online later on ILARA’s YouTube channel.
Programme
Participation is free of charge but registration is mandatory. A registration link through our Eventbrite account will be provided when each talk is announced.
Second talk
Thursday 27 March, 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
“Kalashma: A Newly Discovered Anatolian Language of the Second Millennium”
Romain Garnier (University of Limoges)
(The talk will be delivered in French)
Conference hall of the Ulm site of the Collège de France,
3 rue d’Ulm, Paris 75005

The themed talk series, organised by Andreas Stauder (EPHE-PSL) in collaboration with the ILARA team, is generously supported by the Singer-Polignac and Jan Michalski Foundations.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
ILARA (February 3, 2025). “Decipherment in Progress: Ancient Scripts”, a series of themed talks coordinated by Andreas Stauder, Director of Studies at EPHE-PSL. ILARA, the Institute for Linguistic Heritage and Diversity. Retrieved March 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/138cb