Taxes and authority in the late antique countryside: the reach of the state and the pagarchs of Byzantine Egypt

This is the unrevised version of the 2019 doctoral dissertation. Please consult and cite the revised version, published open access with De Gruyter (Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete – Beihefte, vol. 55):
https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111435923/html
This doctoral dissertation looks at how the Late Roman Empire (284–641 CE) gained access to, and exercised (fiscal) authority in, its periphery, and notably in the countryside where the majority of provincials dwelled. To this end, it analyzes the mainly papyrological evidence about crucial fiscal institutions and their protagonists in and around the cities of the Egyptian provinces from the fourth through the seventh century in order to lay out these protagonists' dealings, backgrounds, and networks across different social and administrative strata from the imperial sphere down to the village level.