Have there been any developments in the deciphering of Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphs?

by Szorongas
faceintheblue

This has been sitting here unanswered and upvoted all day. I cannot claim I have a definitive answer, but I was researching a project involving the Minoans two years ago, and I did my best to use up-to-date materials once I realized how dated my original education on the topic was in comparison to my first pass through a few general histories. With that context in place, I will say I do not believe there have been any developments on Linear A worth reporting, and Cretan hieroglyphs predate Linear A, so even less progress has been made on them as experts are mostly stuck trying to work backwards from Linear B. We've known since the 50s that Linear B is connected to Ancient Greek, but it looks unlikely that is also true of the earlier writing systems. Without more examples or a document turning up using a couple of different writing systems to say the same thing, progress is basically at a standstill I'm afraid.

I don't have a bibliography of my sources for that project handy, but I have looked up one book in particular that is recent and pretty thorough. It's a general history of the Mediterranean, but it unabashedly gets down into nitty gritty details in very satisfying ways. The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World by Cyprian Broodbank. It dates to October 2013, and it definitely covers Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B enough to at least confirm a lack of recent progress. It's also a fun (slightly dense) read full of academic shibboleths and jokes meant to make Classical Studies professors chuckle softly. I am happy to recommend it as at least one stopping point on your research.