Hannah M Cotton's collected papers focus on questions which have fascinated her for over four
decades: the concrete relationships between law language administration and everyday life in
Judaea and Nabataea in particular and in the Roman world as a whole. Many of the papers
especially those devoted to the Judean Desert documents of the 2nd century CE have been widely
cited. Others having appeared in less accessible publications may not have received the
attention they deserve. On the whole rather than addressing the grand narratives of world or
national history they look at the texture of life seeking to provide tentative answers to
historical questions and interpretations by paying fine attention to the details of literary
and especially documentary evidence. Taken together they illuminate fundamental often legal
questions concerning daily life and the exercise of Roman rule and administration in the early
imperial period and especially their impact on life as it was lived in the province and the
period where Roman and Jewish history fatefully intersected. The volume includes a complete
bibliography of her publications.
