Review - Scribbling Through History: Graffiti, places and people from antiquity to modernity, edited by C. Ragazzoli, Ö. Harmanşah, C. Salvador & E. Frood

Abstract

The last 25 years have seen a dramatic expansion in the production and popular reception of graffiti. In the context of this twenty-first century (re)discovery, Scribbling Through History provides a vital reminder of graffiti’s deeper history as an enduring human activity. The volume originates from a conference held in Oxford in 2013, aimed at bring-ing together ‘specialists working on graffiti in as many dif-ferent cultures as possible’ (p. 4) so that commonalities and differences of definition, method and theory might be con-structively discussed and scrutinised. In large part the resulting compilation fulfils this impetus, despite a percep-tible geographic and disciplinary focus on inscriptions of the Ancient or Classical World. There is a compelling diversity of social, religious and political contexts and motivating factors explored across the book’s 12 case studies. Show more