Who Owned a Seal and What Was Sealed? Demographic Approaches to the Byzantine Sigillographic Record

This paper aims to address one of the fundamental questions in Byzantine sigillography: who owned a seal and what, in practice, was sealed? It draws on a statistical analysis of a representative and sizeable corpus, the collection of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, which comprises approximately 1,500 lead seals dating from the 5th to the 14th century. By examining this material, the study explores the relative representation of different social and professional groups among seal owners, as well as the diffusion and evolution of decorative and iconographic motifs across time. The quantitative scope of this work will enable scholars to approach questions of frequency, and to situate data from regional corpora within a broader, more comprehensive framework that reflects the empire as a whole. In a second step, the paper turns to the implications of this dataset for the wider question of the functions and purposes of sealing. It investigates the prevalence of sealing practices across categories of administration and offices, with the aim of identifying who possessed the authority to seal and which offices were most central to the workings of Byzantine governance. In doing so, it also examines two distinct issues: first, the problematic phenomenon of anonymity on seals, and second, the possibility that seals were employed in the authentication of private correspondence. Ultimately, the paper argues that both the phenomenon of anonymity and the emergence of the category of “private individuals” among the seals owners are symptomatic of a shift: the gradual decline of sealing as a tool of strict administrative certification, and its transformation into a cultural medium for the exhibition and affirmation of identity.