#lang scribble/manual


@section{Gendered Roles Within Commercial Textile Production}

Commercial production of textiles opens up the range of textile workers including men – typically slaves, freedmen, or Persian craftsmen – as overseers, merchants, and weavers amongst other roles.1 The portraits on the Igel column include both men and women; however, the imagery on the column depicts only male laborers and overseers working on the commercial distribution of textiles. Both male and female weavers are attested in the contracts that survive from Karanis (P. Mich. Inv. 5191, P. Mich. Inv. 81). While some jobs were completed by both women and men, there were some distinctions. All recorded spinners were women. Managerial roles, merchants, and overseers were more frequently men, such as the procurators in charge of textile establishments in Trier listed in the Notitia Dignitatum.2

Gendering artifacts is always problematic. The literary and epigraphic evidence cited above do suggest the role of women in textile production, but does that directly correlate to textile tools being women's artifacts?@cite-footnote[Roth2007-Spinning]

Negative connotations of men spinning:

-"Antonius is depicted as Hercules ... followed by a procession of women carrying his fan, parasol, wool basket, and also his distaff."@cite-footnote[PasztokaiSzeoke2011 128]
-"Elagabolus ... a bad, weak, ruler, much dominated by his female relatives ... loved spinning wool" (Cassius Dio, LXXX,14,4 and LXXX, 16, 7)@cite-footnote[PasztokaiSzeoke2011 128]

"Despite the reputation of woolwork as a female occupation, some weavers working in the top-tier urban households were male (as were professionals outside of the home) and the same applies for wool weighter ... For the rest of society, wool-workers were female ... If families did not possess looms, the wool was sent to professional workshops to be woven into fabric and then cut and sewn into clothes at home."@cite-footnote[DAmbra2007 99]