IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1013: Encapsulating Time: Archives and Community in Late Antiquity
Wednesday 8 July 2026, 09:00-10:30
| Organiser: | Jakob Riemenschneider, Abteilung für Alte Geschichte, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Michaela Selway, Seminar für mittelalterliche Geschichte, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen |
| Respondent: | Marthe Becker, Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft, Philosophie und Theologie, Universität Bielefeld |
| Paper 1013-a | Storing Occasions: Poetry from the Archive of Dioscorus of Aphrodito (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Greek |
| Paper 1013-b | What Is on Time in Roman Bureaucracy?: Reconsidering the Abinnaeus Archive (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Daily Life |
| Abstract | This session will serve as a forum to discuss and compare different archival practices from local communities. The contributors will each talk about the use of time in these archives: What role do acute requirements and immediate strategies play in the structuring of documents and archives, and what is their influence on future requirements and use-cases of them? In what ways is the present time conceptualised, and what does that tell us about the community that is supposed to interact with the archive? The contributors will assess these questions with archives from the fringes of the Roman Empire, where centralised control and the imperial bureaucracy play a comparatively small role. This is deliberately the case, so as to concentrate the discussion on local requirements and the benefits of the community. |