This conference undertakes a comparative exploration of archival agency in ancient and medieval societies, drawing on the expertise of scholars of different periods and regions of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The goal is to examine the dynamics and effects of archives, both at the level of institutions and administration, and in the domains of documentary culture and knowledge production. Papers will consider institutional aspects (such as record–keeping procedures and strategies of information management) as well as theoretical and cultural dimensions of archiving (e.g. archives as an epistemic infrastructure or as reflecting a particular administrative ideology) while focusing specifically on questions of agency: how does the conception and configuration of archives, the work archives are intended to perform and practical manifestations thereof, affect and shape behavior, ideas, norms, and power dynamics in a given society or administrative system? In other words: how and why did ancient and medieval archives matter?

A further goal of the conference will be a critical examination of scholarly notions of the premodern, revisiting traditional classifications of administrative systems based on their (in)capacity to store and wield information, and reconsidering what have been theorized as the hallmarks of the modern state.