This project was inspired by learning about Indo-European (IE) linguistics, and language history and change more broadly as well. I created a cemetery for dead languages by rendering artifacts with writing on them into grave monuments. There is a bias towards IE languages, as those were what I was learning about. I aimed to use a stylus when the writing was impressed into the wet clay (as with cuneiform; Hittite), a knife or other carving tool on leather-hard clay when the writing was into rock (Elder Futhark) or wood (RongoRongo), and a brush on bisque-ware when the writing was in ink (Gothic). Some of the “dead” languages have (possible) living descendant languages, others we know do not. I also threw many little bells on the wheel, and hung those from a tree over the cemetery installation. These were to represent the very many languages that have vanished without a trace. These made noise in the wind in the installation. 

Credit: Ailís Cournane, 2006, “Cemetery for Dead Languages”, stoneware, porcelain, steel, string

Installation in Vermont (original installation was in Montréal, also under a tree but a much more urban background!). 

Gothic

Tocharian 

Umbrian (a sister to Latin)

Hittite-inspired (I learned quite quickly my makeshift stylus and zero-ancient-writer-skills were not going to make the ultra-dense and precise marks necessary, so this is the least accurate of the headstones I made).

Elder Futhark (foreground); RongoRongo (background)

Phaistos Disk 

Left-to-right: Linear B, Hittite-ish (blue), ?(little brownish one – I forget), Oscan (white), Futhark (ochre), Umbrian (dark brown), Gothic (pale blue), Tocharian (long and horizontal), Sabaean (tilted taupe), Phaistos Disk (round and blue), Etruscan (white); RongoRongo (hard to see here – horizontal and brown in the back); small tablets to the front of the Phaistos Disk and Tochairan are early record-keeping stones (probably the origins of writing systems, tracking trades – e.g., how many sheep did I trade for bolts of cloth?).