Work

Archives and imperial power: archival destruction in the Roman context

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Archival Science

DOI: 10.1007/s10502-025-09492-y

Author: Anna Dolganov

Institutions: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Archeological Institute

Language: English

Topic: Digital and Traditional Archives Management

Subfield: Conservation

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,890