measure them.^28 There have been some indicative studies of the graffiti
from the province, which demonstrate that graffiti were more common
on military than civil, on larger than on smaller sites, and on urban than
on rural sites, and are more often to be found on high status ceramics
such asterra sigillatathan on coarseware.^29 A thin spread of writers
and readers, then, concentrated very much where we would guess. Yet
the great advantage of beginning from Romano-British material is that
whatever can be shown about the use of writing in this poorest of
prospects provides a minimum standard of what we can expect in other
provinces.
The other advantage, naturally, is that the combination of intense
scholarly activity and the manageable quantities of data involved have
allowed a more complete inventory than for any other part of the empire.
The two volumes ofRoman Inscriptions of Britain(RIB) total respectively
the entirety of the monumental epigraphy and almost all the remaining
writing from the province.
30
Curse tablets from Bath and Uley need to be
added, along with the stylus and ink tablets from Hadrian’s Wall and a
handful of other finds mostly from London. When coin legends are added
we have a pretty good idea of the total extant remains from Roman Britain.
How representative are these remains of what once existed? This is a
difficult question to answer, especially in brief. But we can be reasonably
certain that if most writing vanished long ago, there is no particular reason
to imagine any complete categories are missing except for those on the
most perishable materials, chiefly, that is, papyrus. Presumably there
were once school copies of major Latin and perhaps Greek classics, and
perhaps major private collections of books. By late antiquity, when there
is ample evidence of Christianity in Britain, copies of scripture at least
must have circulated. Equally there must also have been a vanished mass
of documentation for private commercial contracts—traders and business
deals are well attested for the province—but only rare examples survive,
like the recently discovered bill of sale that once accompanied a slave
woman sold into Britain from Gaul.
31
The second volume ofRIBhas been published in eight fascicules over
the course of the last decade, and it deals with all inscribed objects except
for monumental lapidary epigraphy. An abbreviated table of contents
would read as follows, fascicule by fascicule:
- The Military Diplomata; Metal Ingots; Tesserae, Dies; Labels; and Lead
Sealings - On the low penetration of euergetism see Blagg 1990.
- Evans 1987 with 2001, 33 4 and seeRIBII fascicules 7 and 8. Raybould 1999
collects a mass of relevant material. See also Hanson and Conolly 2002, Pearce 2004. - Fulford 1994 for an important review of both, pointing out the broad similarities of
the chronology of monumental and mundane writing. - Tomlin 2003.
54 Situating Literacies