Greek Tablet May Shed Light on Early Bureaucratic Practices.

An archaeologist digging in the rubble of a distant past counts on the conqueror's havoc, nature's upheavals and plain human negligence to have left legacies of unintended value -- like a fragment of a clay tablet bearing archaic writing from an early period of state formation in Greece, more than 3,400 years ago. Had it not been for some inadvertence, the tablet would almost certainly have disintegrated in the rain in a year or two and scattered with the wind as so much illiterate dust. The tablet seems to be a ''page'' from a bookkeeper's note pad. Not meant to be saved as a permanent record, it was not baked in a kiln , but ended up in a refuse dump, where a fire hardened the clay for posterity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]