Lin Foxhall (University of Liverpool)
This paper argues that 1) women working in domestic settings were predominantly responsible for the manufacture of the textiles and clothing traded and sold commercially for consumer use in classical Greek cities, including luxury products.
In 1982 Thompson argued, largely on the basis of references to craftspeople in Plato and Aristotle, that in classical Athens numerous male weavers were responsible for producing high-end luxury textiles for the market in workshop settings, while women wove basic, utilitarian textiles in domestic settings for everyday home use. This argument was resuscitated by Peter Acton (2014; 2016) and has been accepted by other scholars (Tsakirgis, Spantidaki). Two major flaws with this paradigm arise: 1) all philosophical references to male weavers are flagged as metaphorical (eikones) and do not represent the reality of textile production anywhere, and more critically, 2) there is virtually no textual, visual or archaeological evidence for textile workshops in any classical Greek city; instead the evidence points to domestic production in household settings by women. It is clear from other lines of evidence, including dedications in sanctuaries (e.g., Brauron, Metaponto), that women regularly made fine, luxury textiles.
Physical evidence for weaving spaces in Greek cities is largely invisible but most textile tools appear in residential settings. Cahill has argued for ‘weaving rooms’ at Olynthus, based on loom weights finds, but in most cases the numbers of loom weights were insufficient to operate a loom, let alone a workshop. No secure evidence for a loom set-up has yet been recovered in a classical Greek context, probably because looms were not permanent fixtures. As in other cities (Halieis, Ault; Herakleia, Meo), loom weights generally appear in storage contexts.
However, textual, visual and archaeological sources for cloth production can be read ‘against the grain’ to show that most elements were managed by women working in households. Obviously, for many reasons, not all households produced surplus textiles for the market, or even sufficient quantities of some kinds of textiles for home use. Households resources were varied and unequal. Women (free and unfree) undertaking textile work in residential settings had different levels and diverse kinds of skills and specialist knowledge.
We cannot ascertain the varying degrees to which women exerted agency in textile manufacture and the sale of the products of their labour, but this does not mean we should assume that all women exerted no agency in this domain. There are several routes through which household- produced textiles could have been sold commercially. Some may have been commissioned. Some may have reached the market through middlemen. Reception areas of household space seem to be an obvious place where, with the collaboration of related men, women who could avoid selling their own wares in the market, might sell their products through intermediaries.
The findings of this paper challenge current understandings of textile manufacture, expand our knowledge of women’s key, and still undervalued, roles in acquiring household wealth, and highlight the complexity of labour ‘specialisation’ in classical Greek economies.