Las tablillas de barro (a veces también tablilla de arcilla) se utilizaron al menos desde 5500 a. C. (tablillas de Tărtăria de la cultura de Vinča). Estas tablillas de la cultura de Vinča podrían ser incluso más antiguas ya que según análisis de carbono-14 datan de 3000 a. C., pero no hay consenso sobre su interpretación. Como medio de escritura se usaron tablillas de arcilla desde el cuarto milenio a. C. en las civilizaciones sumeria, mesopotámica, hitita, minoica y micénica. Los caracteres sumerios cuneiformes eran grabados en tablillas usando un estilete (gr. stylós). Se dejaban secar al aire o eran cocidas en un horno. Los primeros archivos eran colecciones de estos documentos de arcilla. Fueron el inicio de las primeras bibliotecas. En las culturas minoica y micénica, la escritura en tablillas se limitaba a registrar la contabilidad. En el verano de 2010, en el yacimiento arqueológico griego de Iklania se descubrió la tablilla micénica más antigua encontrada hasta ahora y la más antigua del continente europeo. El texto, en lineal B, referido a algún tipo de fabricación por delante y una lista de nombres con unos números por la cara posterior, puede haberse escrito entre 1450 a. C. y 1350 a. C.

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In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ṭuppu(m) 𒁾) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were fired in hot kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East. In the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations, writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. Tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; some modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.

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