ABSTRACT
Many of the preceding chapters have dealt with the private lives and careers of people; but other aspects of the Roman world are illuminated by inscribed texts, among them the financial and business world, and the movement of goods throughout the Roman economic market. Information about such economic activity was frequently inscribed not on stone, but written on other often less durable materials. Papyrus, wooden writing tablets and ostraca (i.e. broken potsherds or slivers of suitable stone) were employed. Sometimes the trade goods themselves, or the containers that held them, bear some message. As so often, it is a combination of different types of evidence which allows a picture to be built up.
