Letter Writing, Materiality, and Gifts in Late Antiquity: Some Perspectives on Material Culture

The study of late antique letters in today’s world often overlooks the materiality of these documents in their original forms. In many cases senders were primarily concerned with the transmission of a message from one person to another through words, and the epistolary medium was chosen as the most efficient way to do this. However, a letter could have numerous other functions, such as serving as a record of a transaction or as a means for the cementing of social bonds, and in these instances the physical existence of the letter was arguably more important than its textual content. Gift exchange also played an important role in creating and reinforcing relationships in Late Antiquity. This exchange often took place over considerable distances, and the short letter accompanying a gift forms a distinct category of correspondence that is attested across the late antique social spectrum. Little information about the practicalities of sending letters of this nature is directly available from the texts themselves, but through inference it is possible to draw some tentative conclusions about the material and social environments of the places through which these documents passed.