Administrative Writing Before Decipherment: The ORCA Threshold and ARCH Protocol Applied to Proto-Cuneiform, Proto-Elamite, Rongorongo, and the Indus Valley Script

Key Points

• This research aims to introduce models for identifying administrative writing without phonetic decipherment using the ORCA threshold and ARCH protocol.
• Introduces the ORCA threshold hypothesis and ARCH protocol for administrative writing classification.
• Applies methodology to 6,691 proto-cuneiform tablets, 146 rongorongo tablet faces, and 2,511 Indus Valley seals.
• Analyzes structural features across three ancient writing systems over 3,700 years.
• Five of six structural features consistently replicate across all three writing corpora.
• Demonstrated capability to identify administrative writing without needing to decode the scripts.
• Established a computational framework that can be used on other undeciphered corpora.