Subproject D: The Social Topography of the Administrative Space

Drawing from the political and social history of the domestic and public spheres, the subproject will investigate administrative space as a space in between the political and the private domains and how their boundaries were demarcated?

It will equally look at how people from different backgrounds and tasks from magistrates to scribes to domestics operated in these spaces. Using tools of social topography, historical geography and prosopography, the subproject will produce a new theory of the overlapping areas of privacy, intimacy and sociability in relation to the “public” areas of politics, military or religious activities as well as the spatial dimension of administration intermingling with them all. In conjunction with the subproject B, it map the magistrate’s social space extending from their homes, country homes, and other dwellings to their site of their official duties, allies, clients, collegia and family. It will study the act of writing and the drafting, transfer and storage of documents as administrative and social facts. Linking prosopographical data with archaeological data, it will trace the evolution of the movements of magistrates through private and public space and the impact of their private wealth and connections.