Literacy and Power in the Ancient World
Book •
Edited by Alan Bowman and Greg Woolf, this collection brings together essays examining literacy's role in administration, identity, and social control across the ancient world.
Contributors analyse evidence from inscriptions, papyri, and material culture to show how writing circulated among elites and non-elites.
The volume emphasises the political and economic stakes of literacy, linking textual practices to governance and social mobility.
It offers methodological reflections on measuring literacy and interpreting fragmentary evidence.
The book has been influential in reframing literacy as a social practice embedded in structures of authority and everyday life.
Contributors analyse evidence from inscriptions, papyri, and material culture to show how writing circulated among elites and non-elites.
The volume emphasises the political and economic stakes of literacy, linking textual practices to governance and social mobility.
It offers methodological reflections on measuring literacy and interpreting fragmentary evidence.
The book has been influential in reframing literacy as a social practice embedded in structures of authority and everyday life.
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Recommended in the show's further reading as a work developing Harris's approach to literacy in the ancient world.
Roman Graffiti: The Writing on the Wall
