Age of ink: inkwells and writing in Roman Britain

above Writing equipment from a votive pit at a villa in Marktoberdorf, Bavaria. The cache includes an inkwell (back), a spatula (middle), and a small knife (front). The presence of this kit might suggest that writing played a role in the rites. ABOVE RIGHT A doctor’s grave from Vindonissa, Switzerland, where a cremation burial was accompanied with two scalpels (right), tweezers (centre), and an inkwell. Although in such cases the deceased are usually assumed to be men, detailed study of the skeletal material revealed the presence of a woman and child.

July 12, 2017

Being able to write was a valuable skill in Roman antiquity, but it is usually estimated that only 15% or so of the population of the entire Empire was literate, with most of those individuals living in towns or serving in the army. Literacy is also thought to have been more common among men than women, and most widespread among urban elites at the heart of the Empire, rather than in Rome’s northern provinces. Much previous research on the subject has, naturally enough, focused on written sources, be they papyri from the Egyptian desert, wax tablets like those discovered at the London Bloomberg site (CA 317), or the renowned ink-written wooden tablets from Vindolanda. One problem with t

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