In the Spring 1987 issue of AUSS I examined the important Pro toSinai tic inscription discovered in 1960 by Georg Gers ter. This inscription is located a considerable distance west of the other Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions which cluster around the mines at Serabit el-Khadem.2 Both by its location and by its contents it appears quite distinct from the usual mining inscriptions or dedications writ...

In this paper, a novel approach is introduced for classifying curves into proper families, according to their similarity. First, a mathematical quantity we call plane curvature is introduced and a number of propositions are stated and proved. Proper similarity measures of two curves are introduced and a subsequent statistical analysis is applied. First, the efficiency of the curve fitting proce...

Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is tha...

Following the discovery of a series of geometric designs on the floor of the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence we analyse the “Medici panel”, which consists of a circular rosette containing a set of inscribed elliptical disks, with a view to regenerating the pattern. The geometry is shown to be surprisingly complex. We were able to determine a numerical solution for synthesising the pattern. A...

Abstract Our research investigates how the design process can accommodate a relational view of agency. According to the relational view, agency or capacities of action is neither an attribute of subjects nor of objects. The relational view of agency in design may allow designers to recognize and support the diversity and richness involved in human agency. To this end, we developed six design qu...

Archaeological excavations in the sites of the Indus Valley civilization (2500-1900 BCE) in Pakistan and northwestern India have unearthed a large number of artifacts with inscriptions made up of hundreds of distinct signs. To date, there is no generally accepted decipherment of these sign sequences, and there have been suggestions that the signs could be non-linguistic. Here we apply complex n...