Pub Date : 2019-11-28DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0001
A. Riggsby
This book investigates information technologies in the classical Roman world—their invention, diffusion, and use, and the interactions among those processes. The focus is on conceptual developments—e.g., “mapping,” “weighing,” “listing”—rather than material ones—e.g., “codex,” “abacus.” (Within the area covered, however, the interaction of concepts with the materiality of their actual uses will be a recurring theme.) It also focuses principally on “high” technologies rather than, say, literacy or numeracy in general. Perhaps paradoxically, this will end up setting the book against most work to date on classical knowledge regimes. Scholarship has typically dealt with intra-elite and largely discursive phenomena. As a result, we know a good deal about the intellectual history of antiquity’s formalized disciplines (e.g., rhetoric, philosophy, law, literature, grammar) and how they competed with and inflected one another. By contrast, my goal is to uncover an alternative set of regimes which were generally not theorized in antiquity, but which informed the practices of daily life, and did so in a broad variety of social locations (even if some had elite origins). These turn out to include relatively advanced technologies like complicated lists, tables, and textual illustrations....
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Pub Date : 2019-11-28DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0006
A. Riggsby
Maps are taken here as graphic representations in which space within the image corresponds to space in the real world. More abstract data graphics in which image space corresponds to other aspects of the real world are rare, but mapping better attests along a spectrum from plans of buildings or neighborhoods (apparently common) to rarer regional and even world maps. Like other devices discussed in the book, maps in general are used in a limited number of contexts (e.g., construction, fiscality), and individual instances are ruthlessly stripped of information not needed for their individual purpose. Few if any of our surviving examples are rigorously to scale, and so some scholars have rejected their identification as maps at all. In fact, while individual approaches are distinct, they nonetheless show family resemblances by drawing differentially from more or less the same pool of strategies. In combination, these do not determine a single spatial reading for any given work of map, but they constrain the range of plausible approximations. If the direct evidence leads us to this non-anachronistic notion of mapping, then indirect evidence suggests cartography would have been important in some additional contexts, as well.
{"title":"Representing Two Dimensions","authors":"A. Riggsby","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Maps are taken here as graphic representations in which space within the image corresponds to space in the real world. More abstract data graphics in which image space corresponds to other aspects of the real world are rare, but mapping better attests along a spectrum from plans of buildings or neighborhoods (apparently common) to rarer regional and even world maps. Like other devices discussed in the book, maps in general are used in a limited number of contexts (e.g., construction, fiscality), and individual instances are ruthlessly stripped of information not needed for their individual purpose. Few if any of our surviving examples are rigorously to scale, and so some scholars have rejected their identification as maps at all. In fact, while individual approaches are distinct, they nonetheless show family resemblances by drawing differentially from more or less the same pool of strategies. In combination, these do not determine a single spatial reading for any given work of map, but they constrain the range of plausible approximations. If the direct evidence leads us to this non-anachronistic notion of mapping, then indirect evidence suggests cartography would have been important in some additional contexts, as well.","PeriodicalId":331559,"journal":{"name":"Mosaics of Knowledge","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132928033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-28DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0005
A. Riggsby
Ancient painting made little or no use of single-point perspective. Some modern scholars, however, have inferred from this that ancient artists and audiences lacked a sense of “space.” This chapter’s three case studies (two involving fresco painting and one low-relief stucco, all in the genre generally known as sacro-idyllic landscape) argue instead for the existence a diversity of ways of encoding spatial information. The approaches are distinct, but they show family resemblances by drawing differentially from more or less the same pool of strategies (involving color coding, scaling, and foreshortening of objects of predictable size and shape, physical overlap, narrative connection, and others). In combination, these do not determine a single spatial reading for any given work of art, but they constrain the range of plausible approximations. That several superficially diverse sets of works converge on this property shows that spatiality was important to all of them.
{"title":"Representing Three Dimensions","authors":"A. Riggsby","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Ancient painting made little or no use of single-point perspective. Some modern scholars, however, have inferred from this that ancient artists and audiences lacked a sense of “space.” This chapter’s three case studies (two involving fresco painting and one low-relief stucco, all in the genre generally known as sacro-idyllic landscape) argue instead for the existence a diversity of ways of encoding spatial information. The approaches are distinct, but they show family resemblances by drawing differentially from more or less the same pool of strategies (involving color coding, scaling, and foreshortening of objects of predictable size and shape, physical overlap, narrative connection, and others). In combination, these do not determine a single spatial reading for any given work of art, but they constrain the range of plausible approximations. That several superficially diverse sets of works converge on this property shows that spatiality was important to all of them.","PeriodicalId":331559,"journal":{"name":"Mosaics of Knowledge","volume":"97 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116407266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-28DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0003
A. Riggsby
The “tables” of this chapter are matrices whose rows and columns are used systematically to arrange and locate bits of data with respect to two parameters. An extensive survey of documents that might have been expected to take tabular form (mathematical and grammatical reference tools) or even appear to be tables (calendars, accounting records) shows that most of them are in fact one-dimensional lists. Modern research has documented the value of tables as a device to think with, but also has shown that their use is less intuitive than might be imagined in a culture (like ours) which is saturated with them. In the Roman world, by contrast, restriction of certain contexts creates a vicious circle, discouraging further use. The contexts in which tables do appear, like those of the related nested list, involve multiple types of cognitive “scaffolding,” particularly the ongoing use and editing of single documents by one or more users over time.
{"title":"Tables and Tabular Organization","authors":"A. Riggsby","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The “tables” of this chapter are matrices whose rows and columns are used systematically to arrange and locate bits of data with respect to two parameters. An extensive survey of documents that might have been expected to take tabular form (mathematical and grammatical reference tools) or even appear to be tables (calendars, accounting records) shows that most of them are in fact one-dimensional lists. Modern research has documented the value of tables as a device to think with, but also has shown that their use is less intuitive than might be imagined in a culture (like ours) which is saturated with them. In the Roman world, by contrast, restriction of certain contexts creates a vicious circle, discouraging further use. The contexts in which tables do appear, like those of the related nested list, involve multiple types of cognitive “scaffolding,” particularly the ongoing use and editing of single documents by one or more users over time.","PeriodicalId":331559,"journal":{"name":"Mosaics of Knowledge","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128938763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-22DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0002
A. Riggsby
This chapter starts with Jack Goody’s observations on the capacities of lists as a written technology, but focuses less on their theoretical possibilities and more on actual Roman usage. Rather than trying to encompass all possible lists (a huge category), the chapter addresses several types that each have some additional information feature: alphabetical lists, indexed lists, tables of contents, and nested lists. Tables of contents and alphabetical lists are restricted primarily to scholarly contexts, and even then are disfavored because of precisely the same disarticulation that gives them their formal power. Nested lists, by contrast are principally used to track large, dynamic, multi-user public archives, arising fairly naturally from the social and material “scaffolding” of that context. Indexed lists appear in a broader variety of contexts, but with a different kind of constraint. The indexical features are used for purposes of verification and authorization rather than as finding aids. In fact, the same appears to be true, if to a lesser extent, for the other specialized kinds of lists.
{"title":"Lists","authors":"A. Riggsby","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter starts with Jack Goody’s observations on the capacities of lists as a written technology, but focuses less on their theoretical possibilities and more on actual Roman usage. Rather than trying to encompass all possible lists (a huge category), the chapter addresses several types that each have some additional information feature: alphabetical lists, indexed lists, tables of contents, and nested lists. Tables of contents and alphabetical lists are restricted primarily to scholarly contexts, and even then are disfavored because of precisely the same disarticulation that gives them their formal power. Nested lists, by contrast are principally used to track large, dynamic, multi-user public archives, arising fairly naturally from the social and material “scaffolding” of that context. Indexed lists appear in a broader variety of contexts, but with a different kind of constraint. The indexical features are used for purposes of verification and authorization rather than as finding aids. In fact, the same appears to be true, if to a lesser extent, for the other specialized kinds of lists.","PeriodicalId":331559,"journal":{"name":"Mosaics of Knowledge","volume":"07 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122222808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-22DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0007
A. Riggsby
The conclusion begins with a summary of the conclusions of the preceding chapters. Most generally, uses of Roman information technologies, even ones that are broadly similar to each other, manifest enough difference in detail to discourage their extension or combination. This is both a cause and an effect of the close focus of both users and designers on extremely specific use-contexts. It then goes on to suggest several contexts for the application and/or extension of its findings. First, a fine-grained understanding of information storage, use, and transfer lends itself to integration with modern theoretical understandings of the economy and of power. Information structures are important “institutions” that give shape to particular economies. Information technology may also have served as a brake on the conversion of the high intensity of absolute imperial rule to “a wide scope of actual mastery over the conduct of the subject population.” Second, there is evidence both that the use of information technology changed radically after the end point of this study (c. 300 CE) and for the roots of the difference in a variety of external historical circumstances.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"A. Riggsby","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190632502.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion begins with a summary of the conclusions of the preceding chapters. Most generally, uses of Roman information technologies, even ones that are broadly similar to each other, manifest enough difference in detail to discourage their extension or combination. This is both a cause and an effect of the close focus of both users and designers on extremely specific use-contexts. It then goes on to suggest several contexts for the application and/or extension of its findings. First, a fine-grained understanding of information storage, use, and transfer lends itself to integration with modern theoretical understandings of the economy and of power. Information structures are important “institutions” that give shape to particular economies. Information technology may also have served as a brake on the conversion of the high intensity of absolute imperial rule to “a wide scope of actual mastery over the conduct of the subject population.” Second, there is evidence both that the use of information technology changed radically after the end point of this study (c. 300 CE) and for the roots of the difference in a variety of external historical circumstances.","PeriodicalId":331559,"journal":{"name":"Mosaics of Knowledge","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122295972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-22DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190632502.003.0004
A. Riggsby
In modern cultures, a wide variety of objects and practices are measured in a variety of dimensions (time, length, weight, etc.) with the implicit expectation that objects of equal measurements are interchangeable in use across a similarly wide variety of contexts. This was not true in the Roman world. Ambitions for standardizing weights and measures were weak at the local level (individual cities or even marketplaces) and weaker still at grander scales (provinces, the empire). Direct observation of surviving measurement apparatus shows the expected lack of standardization. Absent the possibility of transparently translating between thing and number, Romans adopted a number of other petrological strategies. Proportion, rather than measurement anchored to an external standard, was very prominent, sometimes in explicit form, sometimes implicit. In many contexts, a higher degree of approximation was allowed for than we might expect. Most important, while the results of measurement were not seen as transparent, that gave all the more occasion for individual performances of measurement in hyper-local contexts where their effects would be predictable.
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