Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World (CLASSICAL CULTURE AND SOCIETY SERIES)

I received th book in time and in a perfect condition.

This densely-argued book takes time to read but, for anyone interested in Roman information technology, it's well worth the effort. Each chapter deals with a different technology- tables, weights and measures, maps, and so on. The range of topics includes some that have been barely discussed previously in Roman scholarship, and others that have been extensively studied but which Riggsby wishes to analyze in a different way. This means that in each chapter there are new definitional issues and a new set of background scholarly literature to cover. Riggsby handles these well and clearly, but the necessary orientation at the beginning of each chapter does make the reading process more energy-intensive.Overall, the insights of the book can be summed up briefly: Roman information technologies were context-specific, oriented to the task at hand, and tended to bring facts into being rather than record them afterwards (that last requires some explanation- read the book!). This resulted in fragmentation and, sometimes, a difficulty (or just lack of interest) in scaling up or being truly systematic. It's worth a slow read of the book to see how these insights play out in the different contexts and are built up by careful observations of specific examples. And, as Riggsby points out in his conclusion, much room remains for more analysis of these tendencies in space and time.