Page 19 - Manual of Roman Everyday Writing Volume 2: Writing Equipment

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urban and military settlements and centres of trade and production
usually yield a larger amount of evidence for writing than rural
areas, graffiti that imply an educational or educated environment
are also found in villas (e.g. Scholz 2015, 79–83). Finds of writing
equipment in spaces related to crafts and trade, in addition to rural
and production sites, show that writing played a role in the lives of
the non-elite population, possibly to a higher degree than literary
and lapidary epigraphic evidence suggests.

It is important to consider different levels of literacy. Marks and
notes related to the production and trade of goods show that writing
was involved in a variety of crafts and production at various stages.
For the manufacturers and workers this may only have involved
a basic degree of literacy sufficient to make and read the relevant
comments and marks, but not enough to write a coherent text. For
more complex texts, many people will have made use of literacy
through others.
Literary and iconographic evidence shows writing as a predominantly
male activity. Literate women had an ambiguous status in ancient
Rome (Hemelrijk 2015), oscillating between the ideal of the educated
matrona and licentiousness and the stigma of paid work. The well-
known depictions of women holding styli and writing tablets in
Fig. 7: Grave goods of a female burial (burial 11) from Nijmegen (The wall paintings from Pompeii may show Muses (Meyer 2009) or
Netherlands) that included a bronze inkwell, three iron stili, an iron evoke the ideal of a well-educated matrona rather than showing real
knife and remains of an iron wax spatula, 95–110 CE. From Koster women who wrote as part of their daily life. But examples such as
2013, 65 fig. 38. © Collection Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen.
the letter signed by Claudia Severa found at Vindolanda or evidence
for women as teachers, writers or accountants show that this is not
The overall picture thus associates writing with status and prestige, the whole picture. Such evidence is scarce but important and can
and this is supported for example by iconographic evidence, where be complemented by archaeological finds. Writing equipment is
writing equipment and the action of writing are depicted on funerary found in a larger number of female burials than one might expect
reliefs as status symbols (Eckardt 2018, 139–153).
(e.g. Eckardt 2018, 155–165).
It is more difficult to assess the importance of writing for craftsmen
and rural communities, for example, but it is worth looking for
literacy beyond spheres more obviously connected to power and
status. Writing equipment is often found in contexts related to trade
and commerce (Schaltenbrand Obrecht 2012, 237–238) and while