ABSTRACT
Since the nineteenth century, the study of Roman administration has been central to several disciplines such as ancient history and, more widely, legal studies. The way in which these various disciplines approached this topic made it obvious from the very beginning of the studies that it would be necessary to combine several types of sources. The complex reality of Roman administration requires the use of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that can merge the widely scattered information in order to create a comprehensive history of its institutions. In more than a century of studies in the field, the path travelled by several generations of researchers has incorporated new scientific tools and historical methods in combination with the study of the legal corpora and literary sources that have survived to our day. In the early days of the study of the administration of Rome and their dominions, epigraphy constituted the most essential body of evidence, and served as the basis of questioning the orthodox view often illustrated in the legal tradition. The inclusion of archaeology in the formula has since then nuanced many of the initial assumptions made by the fathers of the history of Roman institutions.
