This interdisciplinary study offers a systematic approach to ancient archival documents from the Near East, the Mycenean world, and classical Greece. The contributions aim to achieve a richer understanding of archival documents--by addressing questions of formal aspects of creating, writing, and storing ancient documents--and to discover how concepts of record-keeping were adapted by different ancient societies in the ancient world.

The ink and stylus tablets discovered at the Roman fort of Vindolanda are a unique resource for scholars of ancient history. However, the stylus tablets in particular are extremely difficult to read. This book details the development of what appears to be the first system constructed to aid experts in the process of reading an ancient document, exploring the extent to which techniques from Artificial Intelligence can be used to develop a system that could aid historians in reading the stylus texts. Image to Interpretation includes a model of how experts read ancient texts, a corpora of letter...

This volume richly illustrates the multiple ways in which epigraphy enables historical analysis of the postclassical polis (city-state) across a world of geographically dispersed poleis: from the Black Sea and Asia Minor to Sicily via the Aegean and mainland Greece. The collection of 16 papers looks at themes such as the modes of interaction between polis and ruling powers, the construction of ethnic and social identity, interstate and civil conflict and its resolution, social economics, institutional processes and privileges, polis representations, ethics, and, not least, religious...

Inscriptions and their Uses in Greek and Latin Literature offers a broad set of perspectives on the diverse forms of epigraphic material present in ancient literary texts, and the variety of responses, both ancient and modern, which they can provoke.
This collection of essays explores the various ways in which ancient authors used inscribed texts and documents. From the archaic period onwards, ancient literary authors working within a range of genres, such as oratory, philosophy, poetry, and historiography, discussed and quoted a variety of inscriptions. They deployed them as ornamental...

This volume reconstructs the history of documentary practice in pharaonic Egypt from the early Old Kingdom to the major administrative changes imposed by the colonizing regimes of the Graeco-Roman period. Relating administrative and legal practice to the physical practicalities of the media used for writing, and through the close reading of primary textual sources, it examines how different types of documents - private and official - were created and used. It explores the ways in which the writing of documents was embedded deeply in the interactions between customary social practices, which...