After presenting and describing the cities, we analyze a number of aspects related to the writing that was produced by an urban center. We focus on the writing produced by the urban bodies and powers, and not on its use by the inhabitants of the city. We also focus on the materials involved in the writing, the agents of the act of writing, and above all, the written documents themselves. We investigate the documents in greater depth, pointing out some isolated documents, written on parchment or paper, and their typological diversity. In particular, we emphasize the strategies used by the urban authorities that rely on more elaborate processes of writing, such as the composition of books and property records, true mini-archives; the management of lists and inventories, in which a serial writing is formed, that enabled them to control people and goods; their concern with filing the documents, as a basis for memory, legitimation and exercise of power; and the articulation with orality, in a society where most of the population were illiterate, to promulgate their orders and see them carried out; as well as the requirement to circulate documents, notices and messages with other superior authorities, or parallel authorities. The aim of this study is to give well-based evidence for the use of writing as a means, a product, and an end of the exercise of governance, and as a testimony of the demarcation of urban powers.
the city and the act of writing; the city and the written documents; writing and urban power