Page 24 - Manual of Roman Everyday Writing Volume 2: Writing Equipment

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expect on papyrus, parchment or wooden tablets, such as letters and
reports, are sometimes found on pottery sherds – maybe because
papyrus or wood was not available.

In fact, Roman handwriting can be found on a plethora of surfaces, 4. Evidence for Roman
including those not necessarily meant to be written on. Much as writing equipment
is the case today, some people in antiquity liked to doodle and
scribble onto walls and pavements and marked various objects
such as plates or bowls as their property.

he most obvious kind of evidence for Roman writing equipment
Tare archaeological finds, but both depictions and written
descriptions of the act of writing and of writing paraphernalia are
also preserved. Archaeological, iconographic and literary evidence all
come with their own scope and limitations, which will be addressed
briefly in this section.
Finds of Roman writing equipment can be contextualised with
associated objects and within a given site, and they can, to a
certain extent, be analysed in terms of use/wear and production.
As mentioned in the introduction, there are a number of problems
with the identification and quantification of finds of Roman writing
equipment. An overarching problem are biases of survival, excavation
and publication of archaeological materials and the level of awareness
of writing equipment which varies greatly from region to region,
resulting in very patchy evidence. Nevertheless, a few general
observations can be made.

In general, archaeological finds of writing equipment are known in
greater numbers from urban and military sites than from smaller
settlements or rural sites. This corresponds to our traditional
expectations of higher levels of literacy and more frequent use of
writing in such environments. However, more recent research has
stressed that, while rural sites do feature fewer finds, they might
be more common than expected following Harris’ pessimistic view
(Hanson and Conolly 2002), and also that the simplified categories