Archives and imperial power

Archival destruction in the Roman context

Bibliographic Data

ID12629191
AuthorsAnna Dolganov (0000-0002-1316-4026, Austrian Archeological Institute, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume25
Issue3
Publication date2025-06-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArchival Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1389-0166 • E-ISSN: 1573-7500
PublisherSpringer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1007/s10502-025-09492-y
OpenAlexW4411350305
LanguageEN
References cited17

Rich evidence from Egypt as a province of the Roman Empire documents a curious story of local public archives being mismanaged over a period of several decades after their creation by the Roman state in the mid-first century CE. The events involved the destruction of records by pests and through a failure to catalogue and index them. Precisely why this happened remains a mystery. Was this a case of subaltern resistance by local elites tasked with maintaining Roman state archives, a targeted aim of which was to generate administrative knowledge about private wealth? Or had local liturgists misunderstood or been overwhelmed by the demands imposed by the Roman imperial administration? This story will be compared with other evidence of the destruction of public records in the Roman Empire, which underscores how invasive Roman record-keeping institutions were perceived to be

Ancient history · Archaeology · Archival science · Context (archaeology · Cultural heritage · Power (physics · Archaeological Research and Protection · History

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