This paper investigates Roman writing habits through the evidence of metal styli. An assemblage of more than 400 styli from London constitutes the basis of the analysis, which explores their similarities with examples from other sites in Britain and continental Europe during the Imperial period. The geographical and social distribution of styli suggests that certain types were employed or made in specific locations by different social actors, and that the major political and military centres of the Empire shared a common material culture of writing. The analysis also suggests that styli types of the northern European regions possibly developed from ‘military styli’ brought by soldiers and bureaucrats during the conquest.

This article analyzes the presence of writing instruments dating to the 2nd–1st c. BCE at several archaeological sites of the northeastern Iberian peninsula (current Catalonia), attempting to assess their historical, social, and economic interest. The evidence of the ancient literary sources, as well as the archaeological contexts in which these objects appeared, allow us to interpret these writing instruments as part of the mechanisms of control and recordkeeping deployed by Rome in this territory during the long and complex process of conquest.