Talk presented to the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, 26 Nov.24. The material record of Ancient Near Eastern artifacts and writing is one of the longest and most extensive known in duration and scope. The record substantiates detailed chronological change in material forms that provide novel insights into the development of complex cultural systems like literacy and numeracy. For example, in literacy, change in written form can be related to change in psychological functioning (e.g. the fusiform gyrus becomes trained to recognize written objects through combinations of their local and global features, relaxing the need to maintain the depictiveness that characterized archaic signs). For numeracy, the sequence of artifacts used for counting—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—can be analyzed for their effects on numerical content, structure, and organization, improving the understanding of how complex mathematical systems are elaborated from the perceptual experience of quantity. Both avenues of inquiry have significant potential to inspire new interdisciplinary engagement between writing and number systems research, archaeology, and neuroscience.