Textile production is an economic necessity that has confronted all societies in the past. While most textiles were manufactured at a household level, valued textiles were traded over long distances and these trade networks were influenced by raw material supply, labour skills, costs, as well as by regional traditions. This was true in the Mediterranean regions andMaking Textiles in pre-Roman and Roman times explores the abundant archaeological and written evidence to understand the typological and geographical diversity of textile commodities. Beginning in the Iron Age, the volume examines the foundations of the textile trade in Italy and the emergence of specialist textile production in Austria, the impact of new Roman markets on regional traditions and the role that gender played in the production of textiles. Trade networks from far beyond the frontiers of the Empire are traced, whilst the role of specialized merchants dealing in particular types of garment and the influence of Roman collegia on how textiles were produced and distributed are explored. Of these collegia, that of the fullers appears to have been particularly influential at a local level and how cloth was cleaned and treated is examined in detail, using archaeological evidence from Pompeii and provincial contexts to understand the processes behind this area of the textile trade.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Maps
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Transformations in Textile Production and Exchange in pre-Roman Italy
• Chapter 2: Textile Making in Central Tyrrhenian Italy – Questions Related to Age, Rank and Status
• Chapter 3: Discovering the People behind the Textiles: Iron Age Textile Producers and their Products in Austria
• Chapter 4: Textile Production and Trade in Roman Noricum
• Chapter 5: Craftspeople, Merchants or Clients? The Evidence of Personal Names on the Commercial Lead Tags from Siscia
• Chapter 6: Female Work and Identity in Roman Textile Production and Trade: A Methodological Discussion
• Chapter 7: Trade, Traders and Guilds (?) in Textiles: the Case of Southern Gaul and Northern Italy (1st-3rd Centuries AD)
• Chapter 8: Textile Trade in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
• Chapter 9: Textiles and their Merchants in Rome’s Eastern Trade
• Chapter 10: (In)visible Spinners in the Documentary Papyri from Roman Egypt
• Chapter 11: Textile Production Centres, Products and Merchants in the Roman Province of Asia
• Chapter 12: Ulula, Quinquatrus and the Occupational Identity of Fullones in Early Imperial Italy
• Chapter 13: A ‘Private’ Felter’s Workshop in the Casa dei Postumii in Pompeii