ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how records – especially written records – were used performatively in early societies around the world. To those who encounter a record later in its life, the record appears primarily as a means of looking back at past actions or events; but records offer this capacity because, at the moments of their issuance, they are instruments through which events are occasioned and social actions are achieved. In the terminology of speech-act theory, these actions may be assertive (actions of making statements), directive (asking questions or giving orders), commissive (making commitments) or declarative (effecting changes in the world, as in the case of actions that transfer ownership of property). This chapter investigates how far such actions came to be performed in early societies through the making of records. Wherever written records were introduced, the earliest were assertive or directive. Commissive and declarative records emerged more slowly: long after writing became available, commitments were made and properties transferred by means of spoken utterances or symbolic physical actions, and if any written record was made, it was merely a supplement created after the event. But the beginnings of commissive and declarative records can be found in early societies, and this chapter explores the origins of their development.
