Haring: ‘The workers used individual marks to identify themselves. The marks have been found on their possessions and in graffiti that they applied in their living and working quarters. They were also used to make administrative lists and accounts on ostraca, or fragments of pottery and stone, hundreds of which have been found.' This, and also the organisation of the marks into rows and columns, mean that the marks have become a system, a pseudo-script. 

Haring's aim with his project is to explain the system of logos of the tomb workers against the background of their written documents and the archaeological remains of their living and working quarters. He is particularly interested in the different functions of - and the exchanges between - marks and script. ‘The research consists of two sub-projects, for which two PhD researchers will be appointed. One of the sub-projects will concentrate on the nature of the logos themselves, the other on their functions and the history - including the social history - of this system of marks in the workers' community.

The intensive use of marks, often associated with the illiterate, is all the more remarkable because the workers were relatively highly educated. This is evidenced by thousands of ostraca and papyri from Deir el-Medina and the surrounding area. Haring: ‘They are covered with the usual administrative cursive script, Hieratic. The highly educated nature of the people therefore seems not to have supplanted the intensive use of logos for practical purposes, but rather to have stimulated it.'