Comments on Commercial chapter, Sept. 2020

This was organized rather backwards, it seems to me, and so ended up being a bit frustrating to read. It begins, and most of it remains, as a somewhat normative approach to textile production, accepting common assumptions about “commercial” and such, and not worrying about the major discrepancies and problems with this approach. I wrote a lot of comments on these sections and was a bit discouraged. Then at the very end you present a problem - why aren’t there more weaving spaces - and a much more satisfying interpretation, with which I agree completely, and which finally provides the new approach I had wanted from the beginning. That last section 7 is the heart of what you’ve written so far. It should be put right up front, and then the evidence presented previously, instead presented in the light of this approach. You could start with a longer discussion of the problem (esp. as discussed in sec. 6); this is an important and interesting problem, and worth doing a bit of lit review on it. This relates to your central question, because it makes a big difference whether there was a major shift from household production by women in the home to commercial production by men in workshops, or whether that “commercial production” still took place in the home with transformation of houses (like at Pompeii) from primarily residential to devoting more space to non-domestic production. In which case what were women’s roles in that?

Then how the sources available - archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, literary - are inherently biased against recognizing the importance of women’s roles in textile production. Looms just don’t survive; lit. & icon. both emphasize the normative and ideological role of women, their connection w. textiles but not w. commerce, money-making, larger-scale production, etc. Then as you go through your evidence in more detail - the price edict of Diocletian, graffiti, etc. you have a new model in which to interpret this evidence anew. As it is, it seems like you’re agreeing with the standard model for most of the chapter, and I was left wondering what this dissertation was really about.

In this chapter and throughout, there are important assumptions about the nature of the Roman economy that remain unaddressed. There’s a whole debate about “modernist’ vs. ”primitavist” economies, or whatever they’re calling it now, and unstated assumptions often underlie treatments of more specific subjects like the production of textiles. You start with statements about  “commercial production of textiles” -- diss. p. 5, “As the textile industry shifted into an increasingly commercial endeavor in the Republic and Imperial periods, women’s role in textile production became less prominent…“ but you need to define what you & others mean by this. Maybe it’s all obvious and I just don’t know the literature, but it would be good to give refs to the treatments you’re relying on for these definitions of “commercial.”  Is it production of textiles in modern types of factories and workshops, where many professionals work together in a specially designated space? that seems very post-industrial revolution to me. It’s easy to fall into the trap of modernism, to assume that the Roman economy was organized like ours; of course it’s also easy to ignore the very modern elements of the ancient economy and presume that it’s *all* primitive (as did Finley and Rostovtzeff, who both nonetheless remain very important).  It might be useful to bring in examples of traditional textile manufacture - Scotland, India, etc. - predating the Industrial Revolution and consider in more detail how these professionals organized their labor w/o relying on specialized workshops. This of course is old hat and has been done lots of times, but perhaps could be brought into the modern discussion. These organizations can have fairly sophisticated monetized systems, wages, etc. but w/o the kind of centralized functions that are sometimes assumed in the words “commercial production.” -- as you write at the end. [before I got to the end: You look to Pompeii for such workshops, but fail to find them. This is interesting, not just frustrating and something you should move on from. Is that because we just haven’t excavated enough? hardly. Or there really aren’t any, and work was done in other contexts, primarily domestic? You seem to rule that out because we don’t find enough loomweights -- but we don’t find loomweights to identify workshops, either, so the problem must be that they’re using other types of looms. And the fulleries and dyeing (not dying, I hope) are also normally attached to houses at Pompeii, with doors communicating in to the domestic portion of the house (e.g. Caecilius Jucundus). They could have been manned by slaves, who could be described as “professionals” - and even the house owners perhaps could be “professional” in that they own slaves who do the work. 
Pirson in Dobbins and Foss, World of Pompeii, 463: “Despite a great number of shops and the strong presence of textile workers in voting inscriptions, the distribution of work among different small workshops and their concentration in different areas of the city does not support the hypothesis for an organized textile industry (cf. Jongman, Ch. 32).15”

Add to that model the extensive use of slaves in the Roman empire, and the somewhat permeable boundary between slave and free - you could be freed, but keep on doing the same old thing, as you point out. Without describing the model for production that you are using, you can’t make an argument about whether it was men or women doing the work. “]

Morris and Manning, Ancient Economy, evidence & models - avail now on Hathi Trust.

So for instance in the section on the price edict of Diocletian, there are wages for different categories of weavers. This seems really important - but what is their situation? when they specify “with maintenance” it suggests that they’re living in the workplace - or working in the living-place - or what? this must have been discussed lots of times.

Rostovtzeff Social and Econ. History 486 on city purchasing wool. But remember that R. is perhaps using an old-fashioned modernist view of the ancient economy. 

the bits and pieces of evidence for prices, wages, types of cloth, etc. don’t seem to add to your fundamental argument about women and textiles. It’s sometimes hard to see what the discussion of, for instance, transport costs in Diocletian’s edict is adding to your fundamental argument - one gets the impression that you’re collecting and describing a variety of sources about textile manufacture, without applying them to a narrative or argument. The analysis of the price of tools vs. labor vs. raw materials is interesting, but not developed into an argument and that argument not then tied to the question of women’s roles in the production of cloth in the Roman empire. I imagine that others have analyzed & digested Diocletian’s edict for information about textiles in general - if not, that’s an interesting topic (although beware, someone will always point out that these numbers aren’t real, they’re maxima and probably were completely ignored…) But I’m kind of lost here with regard to your overall argument.

Related to this - another problem you need to confront directly - is the nature of your sources, and the inherent biases and huge gaps. You do this at the end, “If we consider the existing evidence within the patriarchal structure of society in Rome, we can see the other side of this ’missing evidence’”... but I think this needs to be expanded & explored and foregrounded. You’ve got a number of separate issues here:
1. patriarchal structure leads to a) under-representing the importance of women in textile production; b) diverting what is probably real economic productivity into the moral realm of “traditional wife” so scholars underestimate its importance; c) ideal restriction of women to household tasks not public sphere… 
2. independently, the materials women used for spinning & weaving - both raw material and tools - were perishable (wood, cloth, etc.) so they just aren’t preserved in the archaeological record. If looms had been made of stone or something, we’d probably have a whole lot more of them, and could gauge the importance of weaving & women’s work much more easily and make up for the gaps in the literary & iconographic records. 

On the other hand you have to be careful also not to confuse gender norms with reality. If women didn’t necessarily follow gender norms, maybe men didn’t either - maybe more men spun & weaved despite the gender norms. 

Citation system is very irregular. E.g. note 24. If you’re using a citation program make sure your data is consistent. It’s also unusual to include first name in footnotes.