List of figures
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
Plates
Introduction: history and papyri
1 The culture of papyrus
2 Ancient and modern choices in documentation
Languages and scripts
Who wrote what
Survival of papyri
Restoring and using damaged papyri
3 Particular and general
Understanding individual documents
Archives and dossiers
Museum archaeology
Synthesizing dispersed texts
Joining papyri to other evidence
4 Time and place
Stratifying material
A broader Mediterranean context
Province and empire
The chronological axis
5 Quantification
Patterns of land ownership
Textile production
Wine production
Demography
Religious conversion
Mathematics and networks
6 Asking questions
Other ancient texts
Anthropology and the papyri
Post-colonial studies and Ptolemaic Egypt
Gender studies and the papyri
Papyri and the history of emotions
New Institutional Economics
7 The digital revolution
Failing cheaply
The impact of digital imaging
Digital resources and onomastics
8 Continuity and renewal
The durability of philology
The challenge of a larger context
Limits and prospects
Works cited in the text and notes
General bibliography
Index of subjects
Index of texts cited
Biography
Roger S. Bagnall is Jay Professor of Greek and Latin and Professor of History, emeritus, at Columbia University, USA, and Professor of Ancient History and Leon Levy Director, emeritus, at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, USA. His other publications include Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993), The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994), and Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (2011).
