ABSTRACT
Sources that cover small groups or particular sections of society are legion. Oaths and petitions are two examples; others include leases, receipts and contracts. The number of different types of document testifies to the importance of literacy. From the sources, it may appear that the problem for the historian is one of embarrassment of riches rather than paucity of documentation. The changing nature of 'ego-documents' reflects changing mentalities. The ability to sign a name on a document is a universal, standard and direct measure of literacy that involves few problems of inference. However, it is reasonable to ask where signing lies on the wide spectrum of literate skills, between stumbling through a few words and writing a diary or a theological text. Reading may have been the most significant of the spectrum of skills called literacy because it gave access to vicarious experience and may therefore have opened up new avenues of thought and action.
