the textile industries of roman britain

The Textile Industries of Roman BritainAuthor(s): J. P. WildSource: Britannia, Vol. 33 (2002), pp. 1-42Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1558851 .

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The Textile Industries of Roman Britain

By J.P. WILD

he achievement of textile producers in Roman Britain is highlighted most strikingly by two sets of entries in the Edict of Diocletian, a conspectus of traded goods and services available across the Empire, published in A.D. 301. The British birrus, a hooded cape of wool, is

ranked equal sixth in a list of fourteen categories of birrus distinguished from one another by price and quality.' A corresponding, but shorter, list of tapetia, wool rugs, puts both the British first-class and second-class grades ahead of all the rest: the British tapete, in short, was second to none.2 No other British product was deemed worthy of mention by the compilers of the Edict; prima facie, therefore, one could argue that textile production was Britain's leading industry by the late third century A.D. Can such a notion be substantiated?

Since the last survey of the textile industry of Roman Britain in 19703 new material has been uncovered and new perspectives developed. In what follows I will assess or re-assess the data, reviewing the economic as well as the technological aspects.4 The corpus of textiles and textile-related artefacts is comparatively meagre, so any economic evaluation must inevitably be coloured by current thinking about the Roman economy as a whole and risks being overtaken by shifts of emphasis. Some recent reviews of the economic structure of the British province have looked no further than to pottery manufacture for insights into industrial performance and the nature of trade and exchange within and across provincial boundaries.5 To the archaeologist, pottery survives in statistically seductive quantities and its study is largely untrammelled by written sources;6 but Keith Hopkins famously asked: 'Would the distribution map of the ancient wool trade look like recent maps of the distribution of ancient pots? The answer to this question is surprisingly critical for the study of the ancient economy.'7 In reacting to that challenge I will deal with the stages of textile manufacture in their traditional order: some represent virtually independent industries, but all are ultimately interlocked.

FIBRES AND THEIR PREPARATION

Sheep's wool and flax were the principal cloth fibres of Roman Britain, supplemented for specific functions (cordage, sailcloth, etc.) by hemp and occasionally by animal hair. Silk appears as an import.8

1 Wild 1963, 193-202; birrus Britannicus: Edictum Diocletiani xix.48; orthography: Adams 1977, 77; birri listed: Edictum Diocletiani xix.37-8, 44-54; Lauffer 1971, 154-7.

2 Edictum Diocletiani xix.28-35; cf. Caputo and Goodchild 1955, 109-10. 3 Wild 1970a, summarised in Wild 1972. 4 Wild 1988c. Reference should be made to this and to Wild 1970a for fuller illustration of finds, data lists and

explanations of technical processes. I am grateful to the Editor of Britannia and his readers for much helpful comment on the present paper.

5 Fulford 1989; Millett 1990, 157-80. 6 Pots for table and kitchen have just two entries in Diocletian's Edict: Erim and Reynolds 1973, 103; cf. Tomber 1993,

143; but for the soldier's order of priority: 'miles non timetur si vestitus armatus calciatus et satur et habens aliquid in zonula' (SHA, Alex. Sev. 52.3).

7 Hopkins 1983, xxii. 8 Wild 1970a, 4-21.

? World copyright reserved. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 2002



2 J.P. WILD

WOOL

Fibre diameter measurement of samples taken from excavated wool textiles or staples gives information about the characteristics of Romano-British fleeces. Plotted on histogram the distribution of the fibre diameters allows, in theory, each sample to be assigned to a specific fleece-type, although it is to be noted as a caveat that plucking a fleece (see below) and sorting the wool of a shorn fleece can skew a sample towards the finer end of the spectrum. For Roman Britain the fleece-types (as classified by Michael Ryder) range from hairy medium (typical of the earliest domesticated sheep) through generalised medium to medium, semi-fine and true fine wools (achieved arguably through selective breeding). The garrison's clothing at Vindolanda, for instance, around A.D. 100 was woven predominantly from hairy medium (34%) and generalised medium wool (51%) fleeces, with fine (9%), medium (2%) and semi-fine wools (4%) present to a lesser degree.9 The figures available for other Romano-British sites echo this pattern (FIG. 1), but they do not reveal a major advance in fleece quality over that represented in the Hallstatt salt mines of the eighth to third centuries B.C. At Vindolanda there is also a single example of a wool staple from a true hairy fleece, a developed type which ultimately gave rise to modern carpet wool. Surprisingly, there were still sheep without a wool coat, like the first Neolithic domesticates; they may have been feral, possibly even hunted.10

Coupled with the skeletal evidence presently available, these fleece characteristics remind us of two existing relict sheep breeds, the feral Soay of St Kilda and the North Ronaldsay of Orkney." The North Ronaldsay, exhibiting fewer primitive features than the Soay, approximates to the Romano-British peasant's type. Slender-limbed and short-tailed, the animal stands only about 550 mm high at the shoulder. It yields an in-grease fleece of 2-3 lb (1-1.5 kg), and in the same flock hairy medium, generalised medium, and true fine wool coats are found. There are a few black, dark brown, or moorit (reddish brown) animals, but grey fleeces (in fact a mixture of dark pigmented fibres (usually hair) and white unpigmented wool from the undercoat) are in the majority.

Loss of fibre pigment as a result of selective breeding leads to a growing proportion of white sheep in the flock, an advantage if the wool is to be dyed. At Vindolanda 40 per cent of the wools were already white, 50 per cent grey and only 10 per cent black or brown.12 How much even an experienced shepherd on a villa estate understood about the principles of selective breeding is uncertain; but the increasing size of sheep across the Roman period suggested by the bone assemblages indicates consistent management strategies.13 Skeletal evidence, however, cannot yet be correlated with fleece type, though larger animals presumably mean heavier fleeces. Whether British fleece quality improved during the Roman period is a moot point;14 we need a statistically significant late group of wools now to compare with that from Vindolanda. Given the signs of agricultural innovation in other spheres,15 it would be fair to assume some progress, if only towards a greater proportion of fine-woolled animals in the flock. Whether improved strains of sheep ('breed' is an anachronistic term) were introduced by enterprising farmers into the province, possibly from northern Gaul, where Strabo (Geog. 4.4.4.3 (196)) comments on the sound fleece quality of the 'jacketed' sheep, is an open question. 'Intrusive' groups of sheep have been claimed for some faunal assemblages.16 Jackets of skin were a familiar device in Italy to protect fine wool

9 Ryder 1983, 180; Ryder 1977, 34-9. 10 van Driel-Murray 1993, 57; cf. Ryder 1992a, 61-2 for Hallstatt hair sheep. 11 Wild 1982, with literature; N Ronaldsay (Orkney): Ryder 1968; Fenton 1978, 464-73. 12 Ryder 1981; Ryder 1990a, 135-48. 13 Wild 1982, 114; Grant 1989, 140-3. 14 Pace Grant 1989, 146. 15 Jones, M.K. 1989, 131-3; linguistic evidence: Wild 1970b, 128-9. 16 I am grateful to Dr M.L. Ryder for discussing problems of stock improvement with me again. For 'intrusive' sheep cf.

Hall Farm, Orton Longueville (c. A.D. 50-175): Mackreth 1996, 216-17, 224.



THE TEXTILE INDUSTRIES OF ROMAN BRITAIN 3

Z 0 S mm ,I I I m m

c z c z 100% m m

so

60

40

20

VINDOLANDA (N=56)

100 %

80

60

40

20

ROMAN BRITAIN (EXCLUDING VINDOLANDA) (N=25)

100 %

80

60

40

20

ATMINE N56

HALLSTATT SALTMINES (N=66)

FIG. 1. Fleece-types represented in wool textiles from Roman Britain and from the Hallstatt salt mines.



4 J.P. WILD

:; -F-4;~CG~~,t: pj ,~ e'~ottv

R V I ls - ' 1A..~P; \:: Rly ht: c~;%V, X

Ai If., i?~i;:~; : ?..? '??.~rI., .,.N? ??.?A""A 'A e M. 6:0;ik:5;~`?.' If?; ?,"?' I ? ~ ~ ?~it?:!, ? pm ~;J;.::?;: fiwv & w;R

~;::~::~::i"~i:: i?~';;~::rj7~~: ~" Wo. ~ 3.

.i"~.~+fN ;.*4?4

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FIG. 2. Pipeclay figurine from Arrington, Cambs., of an 'improved' ram with a generalised medium or true medium wool fleece, possibly a curly longwool. Scale 2:3.

(Drawing by G. Taylor, reproduced by courtesy of A. Taylor)

coats; but even the capitalist Columella doubted the independent economic viability of fine-wool flocks.17 Three terracotta models of sheep from Arrington, Cambs., of Gallic manufacture, arguably represent standard northern provincial types: two of them seem to have generalised medium wool fleeces with overtones of lustre longwool (FIG. 2), while the third indicates hairy medium wool.18

Sheep were ubiquitous in Britain. Their significance as wool producers may have grown with time, despite an attested decline in their popularity as a food source.19 The distribution of woolcombs in the later Roman period (discussed below) indicates that, as in the Middle Ages, the Breckland of East Anglia and the chalk downs of Central Southern Britain were prime sheep country.20 That long-distance transhumance was practised widely in Britain seems improbable,21 but seasonally available pasture, as in the Fens, may have been exploited.

17 Columella 7.4.1-6. 18 Ryder 1995a, 12-14: Ryder 1993, 205-7. 19 King 1978; Grant 1989, 139. 20 Wild 1982a, 117-19; Bird 1996, 224. 21 For disparate views on the extent of transhumance in Italy: Whittaker 1988, 210-15. I do not now take Gildas'

comment on transhumance in Britain literally (de Excidio Britanniae 3.3).




Sheep were plucked or shorn of their wool in spring and early summer. Plucking conveniently left most of the coarser kemp and hair (vestiges of the primitive outer coat) behind, while clipping with sprung iron shears had the advantage of recovering almost the whole fleece; it was probably the more widespread practice. There is no record of professional sheep-shearers (tonsores) in Britain nor for the skilled and necessary art of wool sorting and grading.22

Woolcombing, on the other hand, may have been a professional or semi-professional occupation. Manning has both discussed the manufacturing methods of Roman iron woolcombs and drawn conclusions from their distribution about an East Anglian woollen industry.23 The implements occur in two forms: (1) as a flat rectangular comb with long teeth at one end, two prongs at the other; (2) as a rectangular comb with teeth at both ends. A handful of recent finds seem to be truncated versions of the one or the other, in secondary use.24

The combs with prongs (FIG. 3) were designed to be slotted into the top of a combing post, and their distribution is almost exclusively East Anglian.25 Examples of double-ended combs are spread more widely, but more thinly, across Central and SE Britain (FIG. 3); they are the standard type in the continental Roman provinces.26 Plotting the findspots of the combs highlights their association, particularly in East Anglia again, with small towns and rural settlements, where blacksmiths made them and resident woolcombers presumably offered their services. Dated finds tend to be third- or fourth-century. As in Gaul, woolcombers may have been employed on the larger villa estates.27 Their role was to align the fibres for spinning, separating long from short fibres at the same time and enabling the spinning of fine 'worsted' yarns from the long fibres, which were packaged for transport and sale as balls of rovings ('sausages' of loose fibres). Woolcombing, however, was an optional extra: wool can be spun direct from the fleece.

The Edict of Diocletian indicates a brisk trade in washed wool from selected centres of repute: tribal areas in the West, city territories in Italy and the East.28 Indeed, Baetica, according to Strabo (Geog. 3.2.6), had changed from supplying clothing to Rome to supplying wool. While Britain was noted for its flocks of sheep,29 the only suggestion of a raw wool trade is the model (?wool) bales from Skye and Sible Heddingham.30 The fleece spectrum at Vindolanda (c. A.D. 100), as noted above, is only marginally different from that of the Hallstatt Iron Age (FIG. 1);31 if the same types of wool were generally available throughout North-West Europe, there would be little call for much long-distance trade in wool within the region. Nonetheless fleeces probably changed hands within the province at country fairs and urban markets after each clipping season. The commandant at Vindolanda, for instance, purchased 38 lb of wool, presumably for his household, and at about the same date someone at Uley in Gloucestershire had wool stolen.32 Depending on whether it was washed still in-grease or dirty, the Vindolanda consignment represents the wool from twenty to thirty sheep.

22 Wild 1982a, 114-16; Ryder 1995b; Cardon 1999, 127-43; tonsor: Edictum Diocletiani vii.23. 23 Manning 1966, 60-2; Manning 1972, 333-5; Manning 1985, 33-4; for professional woolcombers see Holliday

1993. 24 Gorhambury (Herts.): Neal et al., 1990, 140 no. 410, fig. 132; Chelmsford (Essex): Wilson, D.R. 1971, 271 and kind

information from N. Wickenden; Great Dunmow (Essex): information from N. Wickenden; other finds noted subsequent to Manning 1985: Witham (Ivy Chimneys)(Essex): kind information from Hilary Major; Harlow (Essex): information from N. Wickenden; Stanwick (Northants.): Frere 1988, 453.

25 For one from a villa at Vertault (Seine): Soubrier 1968, 198-9, pls 5-7. 26 De Laet 1973, 357-66. 27 Stanwick: Frere 1988, 453; Andover: VCH Hants i, 1900, 302; cf. Columella 12.3.6. 28 Edictum Diocletiani xxv.1-13; cf. Reynolds 1981, 283-4. 29 Incert., Pan. Constantino Aug. 7.9. 30 Wild 1970a, 23. 31 Ryder 1990b, 103-12, esp. 105 table 1, 106 table 2. 32 cf. Frayn 1984, 144-8; Bowman and Thomas 1994, 159 no. 192; Woodward 1993, 129 Tablet 58.



6 J.P. WILD

CAISTOR-BY-NORWICH

WORLINGTON IXWORTH

0 TYPE UNCERTAIN STANWICK O

%ICKLINGHAM GRT CHESTERFORD

KELVEDON HARLOW DUNMOW

GORHAMBURY 0 0 O WITH CHELMSFORD

BAYDON 0 LONDON

EWELL . WOTH.

ANDOVER DOWN O

O 50km

FIG. 3. Distribution map of iron woolcombs in Roman Britain.

FLAX

Thanks to differential post-depositional survival rates, linens make up only a small proportion of the Romano-British textile corpus, but sufficient to suggest local flax cultivation.33 Supporting evidence is slim, but gradually accumulating.34 Palaeobotanical sampling has demonstrated that flax was grown on Roman agricultural sites in the Thames Valley: at Barton Court Farm seeds and

33 Wild 1970a, 13-15, 91-4. 34 I am now dubious about the Romanitas of glass linen smoothers: Wild 1970a, 15, pl. XIId; cf. Ferdibre 1984, 228, 244.




capsule fragments were common.35 The list of other site finds is still short,36 but in the light of the medieval indications of widespread flax cultivation, a modest Roman industry can be hypothesised.37 So far none of the traditional implements for breaking, skutching and hackling the fibre to extract it from the plant stem for spinning has been recognised, nor have retting tanks for the first stage of flax processing been unequivocally identified.38

HEMP

In the Middle Ages hemp was a common poor man's crop.39 It is beginning to register in the palaeobotanical record for Roman Britain too.40 Traditionally its use was for sailcloth and rope.41

OTHER FIBRES

Other accessible fibre sources were tapped for particular purposes, including hairmoss for caps, tree bast for rope42 and goat hair for sacking.43

DYEING AND DYESTUFFS

Dyeing is reviewed at this point because in antiquity wool was normally dyed in the fleece before spinning, as dye recipes, price lists and casual references reveal.44 Flax on the other hand, if it was dyed at all, was dyed in the hank.45

Few Romano-British textiles retain visible colour; but over the past twenty years George Taylor and Penelope Rogers in York have made remarkable progress in identifying dye residues in bog-found and metal-replaced textile remains. About 20 per cent of the 89 wool textiles sampled at Vindolanda still contained some detectable dyestuff, which in eight cases had been extracted from the root of madder (Rubia tinctorum L) and in one case from a local lichen. Madder, which would have been imported in dried root form, gives shades of red, and lichens give a purple.46 Wool yarn from a grave at Arrington, Cambs. (c. A.D. 130-160), now pinkish fawn, had been dyed red with madder or a bedstraw, and a black yarn sample may have traces of indigotin from woad (Isatis tinctoria L) as well as residues of madder or a bedstraw.47 Seeds of woad, the leaves of which are a source of a blue dye, have been recorded at Dragonby, N Lincs., in a very late Iron Age deposit.

35 Miles, D. 1984, 25, fiche 9:Dl1-12, 9:E13; Claydon Pike, Glos.: Miles and Palmer 1990; Northmoor, Oxon.: Robinson 1990, 69, 71; Appleford, Oxon.: Robinson 1980, 92, 96; Standlake, Oxon.: Robinson 1995, 158-67, esp. 160, 167.

36 London: Willcox 1978, 412; Willcox 1980, 28; Cirencester: Wacher and McWhirr 1982, 228; York: Hall et al. 1980, 146; Hall and Kenward 1990, 304, 335; Wentlooge Level, Gwent: Fulford et al. 1994, 204; Catterick, Yorks.: Busby et al. 1996, 294 table 2; Stonea, Cambs.: van der Veen 1996, 616 table 61, 620, 636-8; Heybridge, Essex: Wiltshire and Murphy 1998; Leicester: Monckton 1996.

37 Thirsk 1988, 472-3; Thirsk 1967, 13, 20, 87, 177; Bond and Hunter 1987 (Orkney). 38 For stages of preparation: Baines 1985; Freckmann et al. 1979, passim; retting at Lower Caldecote, Beds., suggested:

Frere 1989, 292 and Standlake, Oxon.: Robinson 1995, 167. 39 Evans 1985, 12-39. 40 Dark 1999, 251, 261; York: Hall et al. 1980, 143; Hall and Kenward 1990, 302, 330; Thorpe Bulmer, Durham: Bartley

et al. 1976, 437-68; London: unpublished. 41 Godwin 1967, 42-6, 137-40; Wild 1970a, 15-17. 42 Hairmoss: Curle 1911, 108, 358, pl. XV; Wild 1994a, 61-8; tree bast: Rhodes, M. 1986, 232. 43 Goat-hair from Carlisle: kind information from Penelope Rogers; for goat-hair fabrics from Palamos, Spain: Laures

and Pascual 1983, 264-6. 44 Pfister 1935, 1-59. That wool was dyed in the form of rovings may need further consideration. 45 Wipszycka 1965, 25; cf. Sheffer and Tidhar 1991a, 8 ('Ajrud); Eastwood 1985, 194. 46 Taylor 1983; traffic in madder: Bender Jorgensen and Walton 1986, 185; Walton 1988, 154-5; cf. Walton Rogers

1997, 1769. 47 Ryder 1993, 203-4.



8 J.P. WILD

Weld (Reseda luteola), now classed as a weed, may have been introduced to Britain originally for its yellow dye; it has been noted in the plant record at York and London.48 Green dyes are hard to identify by current methods of analysis; but the model of a bale of green-dyed wool from Skye points to their use.49

The most renowned ancient dye was the purple extracted from the hypobranchial gland of Mediterranean members of the murex and thais whelk families: just one example of this exotic colorant has been found in Britain on a textile - presumably imported - in a late Roman burial outside Dorchester, Dorset. The purple yarn in a fine twill from the first-century 'doctor's' grave at Stanway, Colchester, is too small in amount to analyse.50 The Atlantic whelk (Nucella lapillus L) was exploited for purple on the North Devon coast, as it was in Roman Gaul and early medieval Ireland.51 In fact a much cheaper purple could be achieved by overdyeing woad with madder, standard practice in Roman Egypt.

Colour contrasts in shades of brown and white were achieved by combining dark naturally pigmented with light unpigmented wools in the same cloth - a convenient alternative to dyeing.52

Finds at present give just a glimpse of the Romano-British dyer's resources: woad for blue, bedstraw and (imported) madder for red, lichens for purple, and weld for yellow. He or she also knew how to mordant wool (prior to dyeing) with lixivium (lye). However, there is still no unequivocal evidence in Roman Britain for fixed plant: the heated vats, cauldrons and boilers installed by the dyers of Pompeii.53 Nonetheless, simple portable equipment was arguably adequate in the backyard context of much rural and urban textile manufacture.

SPINNING

Spindles, and probably distaffs which carried the prepared fibre, were of wood and so are rare finds; but their more costly skeuomorphs, carved bone spindles and segmental distaffs of Whitby jet, shale, or amber, survive to indicate size and form.54 A third related artefact, however, the spindle whorl, of stone, bone, jet, shale, terracotta, cut-down potsherds, or lead, is present on most sites.55 Its weight is not often published; but it is this parameter, coupled with the whorl's shape and the weight of the spindle that governs a yarn's character.

Throughout the Empire the sources indicate that spinning was strongly gender-related and centred socially and economically on the home. No woman could escape the task; for the Roman mos maiorum expressed in literature and funerary art decreed that even the wealthy should set an example, if only to supervise the work of their household slaves or colonae.56 Spinning, in fact, was a production bottleneck; for on a low estimate at least five handspinners would be needed to

48 Woad: van der Veen etal. 1993; weld: Hall and Kenward 1990, 303, 326; Hall et al. 1980, 146 table 50; Willcox 1980, 27 fig. 13; Murphy 1996. I am grateful to Dr Hall for these references and to Penelope Rogers for telling me that there is evidence for the use of weld in a textile from Carlisle.

49 Wild 1970a, 23. 50 Dorchester: unpublished information from Penelope Rogers; Stanway: Wild 1998a; for the vast literature on murex

purples see references in Steigerwald 1986; for recent analyses see Wouters 1991, 221-32; Verhecken 1991, 213-20. 51 Ratcliffe 1995, 148-9; Cocaign 1997; Grierson 1986, 160-2; Schweppe 1993, 317. 52 Ryder 1990a, 135-48. 53 Lixivium: Wild 1976b, 58: plant: Jongman 1991, 166; Moeller 1976, 35-9; cf. Walton 1991, 332-7. 54 Wild 1970a, 124-9; for a wooden spindle cf. Wild 1988c, fig. 16a; for distaffs: Snape 1994, 59, fig. 8, 23; Pirling 1976,

101-9. 55 For representative selections: Crummy, N. 1983, 67; Wrathmell and Nicholson 1990, 120-6; Neal et al. 1990, 162-3,

fig. 145; Meates 1987, 58 fig. 21, 59. 56 A typical tombstone from K1ln shows loaded spindles in the wool basket of Marcia Procula: Galsterer 1975, 56 Nr.

219, Taf. 47; cf. the wool basket of Regina at South Shields: Toynbee 1962, 160 cat. no. 87, pl. 85; for background: Gardner and Wiedemann 1991, 50, 52-3, 102; Treggiari 1976, 83-4.




-0 3n -0.3-

0 2 0 40 80

LL

0.U.t

iI 0.1 x

00.30.37

warp TT/165 Weft

0-0 ..3-0.3n I-

to

0.3n-0.3n

Warp TT/590 Weft

FIG. 4. Polar plots of the twist character of warp and weft in two wool textiles from Vindolanda: TT/165 is a 2/2 diamond twill, TT/590 a basket weave. (Plotted by C.R. Cork)

keep a single weaver in continuous employment. Some of the larger estates may have kept full-time quasillariae, spinning girls, but for ordinary households craft division would not be practical and weaving could not begin until there was an adequate stock of warp and weft yarn.57 That spinning was a regular chore for the female members of a household in Roman Britain seems highly probable.

57 Quasillariae in the household of the Statilii in Rome: Treggiari 1976, 83.



10 J.P. WILD

The quality and consistency of Romano-British spun yarns, particularly in wool, was very high: the work of a beginner or of the simply negligent is difficult to spot. The angle of spin was carefully controlled (FIG. 4). Fine combed yarns, however, such as occur in the early Middle Ages, are hard to identify with confidence, and the exceptionally fine yarns recorded in the eastern provinces are largely absent from textiles of western manufacture.58 Outstandingly able spinners might have been able to sell their services to others. Through the use of image analysis software it has proved possible to isolate the 'fingerprints' of individual spinners contributing wool yarn to the Vindolanda textiles. Image analysis shows, for example, that in diamond twill TT/165 at Vindolanda (FIG. 4), while the warp and weft are spun in opposite directions, the yarns are otherwise clearly similar. In the basket weave TT/590 by contrast both yarn systems are Z-spun, but the weft deliberately more weakly so. The discovery has considerable potential for future research.59

The direction in which the spindle was rotated was dictated by convention - clockwise ('Z-spun') in all the western provinces.60 Anticlockwise spin ('S spin') was only used for special structural or decorative effect in Britain, and its employment in both warp and weft may be indicative, especially if coupled with other features, of an intrusive (i.e. imported) item.61 Yarn was rarely plied in Roman Britain, except as sewing thread.

WEAVING: EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

Our current view of the nature of weaving technology in Roman Britain depends on a patchwork of sources, direct and indirect. There is one obvious lacuna: no diagnostic timber components of a loom have yet been recognised, although we have a clearer idea now than thirty years ago of what to expect.62 There is evidence for the use in Britain of the warp-weighted vertical loom, the two-beam vertical loom, and a number of smaller band-weaving devices.

In archaeological contexts air-dried or baked clay weights are the principal surviving indicators of the warp-weighted loom, most convincing when found in groups. In the western Roman provinces they are pyramidal, with a hole through the top for suspension; but in Britain (as compared, for example, with Central Gaul) finds of any type are curiously sparse.63 There are just two significant groups: one of five pyramidal weights from Mancetter, Warwicks. (c. A.D. 60), the other of nine flattened triangular weights from the Bucknowle Villa in Dorset.64 Until the early second century A.D. weavers may have continued to use the very heavy triangular loomweights characteristic of the British Iron Age.65

In the mid-1950s the rediscovery in Norway of a living tradition of weaving on the warp-weighted loom offered a new focus for interpreting the scattered ancient sources.66 The

58 Cooke and El-Gamel 1990, 69-74. 59 Cork et al. 1996, 342-5. 60 Wild 1970a, 38; Spain may be the exception (Alfaro Giner 1984,81, 243-4), but the sample is too small to be sure,pace

Bender Jorgensen 1992, 107-8. 61 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 13; Wild 1970a, 44-5. 62 Warp-weighted loom of A.D. 1250-1350 in Greenland: Arneborg and Ostergird 1994; Icelandic looms: Guaj6nsson

1990 with literature; cf. Springe and Sydberg 1986. 63 Wild 1970a, 136; further finds are mentioned without detail in Neal 1987, 335; Saunders and Harecroft 1977,

109-56; Goodburn 1976, 332; CBA Excavation Summaries for 1973, 1974, 9; Central Gaul: Ferdiere 1984, 241-4; Wild 1999, 33.

64 Mancetter: kind information from Mr Keith Scott; Bucknowle: Frere 1987, 345, fig. 21; Collins et al. 1986, 2. 65 Examples from Roman contexts: Major 1982, 100-1, fig. 21 (Nazeingbury, Essex); Miles, H. 1977, 138

(Honeyditches villa, Devon); Pryor 1985, 174-9, figs 120-3 (Maxey, Lincs.). They were still being made and fired in the second century A.D.: Field and Palmer Brown 1991, 49, 51. For important Iron Age collections: Pryor 1984, 168, table 3; Fasham 1985, 90.

66 Hoffmann 1964; Schierer 1987, 29-87.




loom is substantial - up to 2 m high and 3 m wide. It is used for weaving one-piece textile items which have along one transverse edge a diagnostic flat-woven starting-border with paired weft. Just such a starting-border has been recorded on a diamond twill in wool from Verulamium (c. A.D. 210).67

To beat up the weft, as each pass was inserted, Norwegian and Icelandic weavers used a wooden weaving sword, and to keep the warp in order a bone pin-beater with a point at each end was drawn across the threads as if they were the strings of a musical instrument.68 Pin-beaters are known from Roman Britain, but so far no weaving sword.69 What have long been accepted as the Iron Age precedessors of these implements - the long-handled bone or antler 'weaving comb' and single- ended 'pin-beater' - have again come under critical scrutiny: they may have little to do with textiles.70

A way to account for the paucity of loomweights in Britain would be to argue that the two-beam loom began to displace, but not fully replace, the warp-weighted loom here by the second century. There is literary authority for such a change in Italy.71 In Greece and the Levant loomweights ceased to be made after about A.D. 100, and in Spain and Central Gaul almost all datable Roman loomweights can be assigned to the first century A.D.72 The archaeological picture thus seems to support the written accounts. Britain could conform to the same pattern; but argument ex silentio is risky.

The two-beam loom was constructed to the same proportions as the warp-weighted loom: the second, lower, beam replaced the weights.73 Weaving experiments conducted at Lejre in Denmark show that we have to be cautious in claiming that the two-beam loom had particular technical advantages. Nonetheless, Mediterranean weavers preferred it for textiles that incorporated tapestry-woven decorative bands or figure inserts,74 and this technique may have reached Britain in company with the new loom and the broad-headed weaving comb. A few simple examples of tapestry bands have been found here.75

A rigid heddle of bone from South Shields and finds of square or triangular bone or occasionally copper-alloy tablets from various British sites point to the weaving respectively of plain (1/1) tabby and tablet-woven bands.76 Some may have served as headbands, girdles, bandages or webbing;77 others formed the borders of larger textiles. Independent bands and braids were probably woven on a small body-tensioned backstrap loom,78 borders on devices attached to a larger upright loom.

Frances Pritchard has recently argued for the making of bone tablets in London.79 The

67 Wild 1970a, 99-100, table A49, fig. 28. 68 Hoffmann 1964, 126-7; Gudj6nsson 1990, 173-4. Pin-beaters (radii) are said to 'sing': Wild 1967b, 151-5. 69 Wild 1970a, 134, table K1-5; for a wooden weaving sword: Sheffer and Tidhar 1991b, 29 fig. 30 ('En-Boqeq). 70 'Weaving combs': Tuohy 1992, 385-8; Tuohy 1990, 6-8; Ryder 1991, 11-12; Wenham and Heywood 1997, 144; 'pin

beaters': Wild 1970a, 66; used for a manifestly non-textile purpose are 57 'bone points' of the same form from Fiskerton, Lincs. (1982: unpublished).

71 Seneca, Ep. 90.20; Pollux, Onom. 7.36; 10.125. 72 End of Greek loomweights: Thompson, H.A. 1934, 476; Ploug 1985, 235; end of loomweights in Palestine: Shamir

1994, 277; Spain: Alfaro Giner 1984, 99-102; Castro Curel 1985, 232 fig. 3 (but neither is explicit about dating); Central Gaul: Ferdiere 1984, 241-4; but found, too, on late Roman villa sites: ibid., 226.

73 Wild 1992a, 12-17. 74 Lejre: Dokkedal and Norgaard 1986, 11; Granger-Taylor 1992, 18-28. I do not accept Granger-Taylor's thesis that

tapestry with dropped warp must necessarily be attributed to the warp-weighted loom. 75 Walbrook, London: Wild 1975, 138-43; T545 from Vindolanda: Wild 1992b. 76 Wild 1970a, 72-5. 77 e.g. the narrow tabby headband from Poundbury, Dorset (Grave 530): Crowfoot 1993, 113; and from York: Wild

1970a, 96 table A39(4); webbing: Wild 1977, 6-7, nos 5-9. 78 cf. Hitchcock 1985, 36-41; Feltham 1989, 21-4. 79 Pritchard 1994; cf. Crowfoot et al. 1992, 130.



12 J.P. WILD

distribution of such artefacts embraces both town and country and a timespan from the first to the fourth century A.D. In no case so far has a set of more than four matching tablets been discovered.80 Taken at face value, this may suggest that tablet-woven bands in Britain were strictly functional and did not become decorative entities in their own right, as happened later.81

The vexed question of the character of the loom on which complex pattern weaves like damask and compound tabby and twill were woven need not concern us here.82 Such feats of textile design and execution are unlikely to have been witnessed in Britain, although the resulting fabrics were imported (see below).

Mapping the finds of weaving implements reveals disappointingly little about who wove, and in what kind of context. These questions can only be tackled as part of an examination of the economic framework of textile manufacture as a whole (see below).

WOVEN AND NON-WOVEN FABRICS

THE VALIDITY OF THE SAMPLE

The textile corpus for Roman Britain is growing. By 1970 fragments of 63 textiles or their impressions had been recorded from some 40 sites, a fairly even, if thin, spread across the province. Fifteen years later the figure had risen to 338 fragments. Since excavation resumed on the Flavian-Trajanic 'deep deposits' at Vindolanda in 1985, a further 700 items have been recov- ered; the latter constitute for the first time in Britain a substantial closely-dated assemblage.83 Individual finds may obviously be of intrinsic interest; but the future of textile studies lies with the large, statistically significant group. The only collection from the western provinces comparable with that from Vindolanda came from early Roman levels at Mainz in Upper Germany; but while selected pieces were kept for exhibition, and survive, the rest perished in 1945.84 The Vindolanda finds pale into insignificance, however, when compared with the 25,000 rags from the Trajanic middens at Mons Claudianus in Egypt, and there are other equally prolific Roman sites elsewhere in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, along the Red Sea coast, in the Upper Nile Valley, and in the Levant currently being excavated or studied.85

To what extent are the extant textiles representative of what the Romano-British populace wore, used, or saw about them?

The problem of differential survival looms large. Damp anaerobic bog conditions (for example, at Vindolanda, Castleford, and in the London Walbrook)86 preserve animal fibres, wool and hair, but not bast fibres like flax or hemp. Replacement and/or conservation of fabrics by metal corrosion products (for example, on gravegoods at Lankhills, Winchester, or the hoard contents at Corbridge)87 is frequent and not selective; but it yields frustratingly tiny samples. Carbonisation and association with gypsum play but a minor role.88

80 Richborough (x5): Wild 1970a, 140 table 09; Crundale, Kent (x4): Roach Smith 1856, 183-4 (Grave 5); cf. Frere 1985, 315; Corinium-Cirencester (x4): McWhirr 1986, 115 nos 218-21, fig. 84 (unworn). An augmented corpus of tablets is to be published by S.J. Greep and J.P. Wild. For the technique of tablet-weaving: Wild 1988c, 38-9; Hansen 1990.

81 e.g. Crowfoot and Hawkes 1967; Nockert 1991, 81-93. 82 Wild 1987b; Wild 1991a, 11; Thompson and Granger Taylor 1995/96. 83 Summarised in Wild 1993a, 76-90; selected items in Wild 1992b. The Vindolanda corpus is currently the object of

study by the Manchester Ancient Textile Unit, supported by the Leverhulme Trust. 84 Wild 1982b; Streiter 1988. 85 Mons Claudianus: Bender Jorgensen 1991; Quseir al-Qadim: Eastwood 1982; 'Abu Sha'ar: Bender Jorgensen and

Vogelsang-Eastwood 1990, 5; 1991, 3-4; Masada: Sheffer and Granger-Taylor 1994. 86 Vindolanda: Wild 1992b, 1993a; Castleford: Wild 1998b; Walbrook: Wild 1975; cf. Wild 1988c, 7-12. 87 Lankhills: Crowfoot 1979, 330-9; Corbridge: Wild 1988b, 86-93, 107-8. 88 Carbonisation: Wild 1984a, 44-7; gypsum: Wild 1993b, 112.




100 < m r • m

c 60

zz z -

800

6200

m 40 0 -- r ' - m m

,- 100% m 0

80 N=33

c 60

x 40

0

Z 20 0 M4M--I

M

100%

80 N=15

m

Z 20

40

80 m Z 20

o

100%

N=26

n 60

-4 40

Z2

FIG. 5. Findspots of Roman textiles in Britain: character and date of the individual findspots.



14 J.P. WILD

Scanning the range of archaeological sites from which textile remains have been recorded (FIG. 5) reveals some unfortunate gaps. A mere handful of fragments come from within urban or rural settlements. By contrast military sites in the North are well represented - but only in the first and second centuries. In the South both cremation and inhumation burials contain useful textile information, and, while the main weight of such evidence is in the fourth century, there are potentially representative finds throughout the Roman period. We are reasonably well informed, too, about Romano-British purses and moneybags, thanks to the metal salts leaching from coin hoards. Cloth impressions on building tiles add helpfully to the statistics. But there is only one classic bog-burial of Roman date, from Grewelthorpe Moor in Yorkshire.89

Clearly one cannot simply lump these finds together.90 In Roman Iron Age and early medieval Europe, for instance, significant contrasts may be drawn between the kinds of textile found in graves and on contemporary settlement sites,91 and the same is true of late Roman graves and settlements in Egypt. Similar discrepancies could be expected in Roman Britain, if social conventions demanded that graves, especially high-status graves, be furnished with higher-quality textiles than would be the norm in everyday life.92

A FABRIC SURVEY

Given the pitfalls outlined above, the most helpful way forward may be to pick for discussion two comparatively well-endowed 'textile environments', the first embracing Vindolanda and neighbouring military sites on the northern frontier between c. A.D. 80 and 120, the second focusing on Colchester and its cemeteries from the late Iron Age to the end of the Roman occupation.

Environment 1: the Flavian-Trajanic North

Three sites contribute to the picture. At Vindolanda numerous rags have been retrieved from occupation deposits on successive floors of Flavian and Trajanic fort buildings (FIGS 6, 8); the material from Corbridge had been used to wrap a hoard of armour and weapons dated to c. A.D. 120; there are contemporary finds from excavations in Annetwell Street, Carlisle, just inside the fort, which include some unusual items.93

The most prominent type of cloth in the North was woven of generalised medium wool in 2/2 diamond twill with Z-spun warp and S-spun weft, designed to ensure a compact texture (FIG. 6). The diamond repeat pattern varies, but reversal after ten warp threads and either seven or nine weft threads is on balance the most popular. There is usually full displacement. Most cloth is medium-weight, marginally warp-faced, with a thread-count of about 14 warp threads by 12 weft threads per cm; but there are some finer twills of 25 warp by 22 weft threads per cm. Selvedges (FIG. 7) may be plain, the weft simply returning into the next shed; but many weavers took pains to strengthen the edge, and tubular 'hollow selvedges', flat selvedges with paired weft, selvedges over one or two warp bundles, and twined-cord selvedges (possibly tablet-woven) are recorded. No starting-borders or finishing-borders have yet been recognised on twills in the Roman North. Frequently the diamond twills have a thick nap, and at least five from Vindolanda were dyed red with madder.94

89 Wild 1991b. 90 As in Bender Jorgensen 1992, 21-6; but see her useful distribution map, ibid., 200 fig. 185. 91 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 61; cf. Higg 1988. 92 The silk from Holborough (Wild 1965, 246-50) and Colchester (Wild 1983), gold thread from Poundbury (Wild

1993b) and purple wool from Fordington, Dorset (unpublished) are all, suggestively, from graves. 93 Vindolanda: Wild 1977; Wild 1993a, 76-90; Wild 1992b, 66-74; Cork et al. 1996; Cork et al. 1997; Corbridge: Wild

1988b, 86-93, 107-8; Carlisle: unpublished material from Annetwell Sites A and D to be published by Penelope Rogers, to whom I am grateful for information.

94 For a Flavian diamond twill (Z/S) from Camelon fort: Bender Jorgensen 1992, 199.




FIG. 6. Wool fabric in diamond twill weave from Vindolanda (TT/622), heavily worn. Scanning electron micrograph at magnification xl . (Photo: L. Fang Lu, by courtesy ofR.E. Birley, Vindolanda Trust)

The weight of the cloth was probably more important in determining its primary function than the weave; but since over 62 per cent of the Vindolanda corpus is diamond twill and most is medium weight, with a nap, it seems inescapable that all inhabitants of the fort wore it, probably in the form of capes, cloaks, and other outer apparel. By contrast, plain 2/2 twill (5 per cent at Vindolanda), and herringbone twill were of minor significance. It is frustrating to be unable to relate the surviving textiles to the documentary evidence for clothing on the northern frontier (see below); but a programme of testing and analysis being formulated by the Manchester Ancient Textile Unit may begin to bridge the gap.

Another readily recognisable cloth type (about 15 per cent at Vindolanda) is based on half-basket weave ('extended tabby') in which single hard Z-spun yarns are taken for the warp and weaker Z-spun pairs for the weft (FIG. 4). Such textiles are mostly fine (up to 18 warp-ends by 40 weft pairs per cm) and light in weight, lacking a nap. Their selvedges tend to be carefully constructed over warp bundles of increasing diameter as the actual edge is reached, and there are traces of an extra wrapping thread protecting some of them. The weaver may have begun his or her work with a twined-cord starting-border (FIG. 7), but that is just an hypothesis.95 Ultimately the loose warp-ends were twisted together into a cord parallel to the weft.96

95 As on a fine tabby from Purton, Wilts. (unpublished); cf. Verhecken-Lammens 1992, 29-36. 96 cf. Wild 1970a, fig. 49 (upside down).



16 J.P. WILD

THE NORTH THE MEDITERRANEAN

-- l- -E Verulamium Egypt I

II- I-I I-I I--I I

FLAT-WOVEN STARTING BORDER

Marseilles

I.

II

HOLLOW SELVEDGE

REINFORCED SELVEDGE

II - 1 - I I I Grewelthorpe Moor - 1 - I-I-I-I I I--I1--1

111):

-I-- - IIII)

-REINFORCED SELVEDGE CORDED TRANSVERSE ED-I--I GE

REINFORCED SELVEDGE CORDED TRANSVERSE EDGE

FIG. 7. Textile edging structures: Northern and Mediterranean traditions.




FIG. 8. Wool fabric in plain 1/1 tabby weave from Vindolanda (TT/626). Micrograph at magnification xll . (Photo: L. Fang Lu, by courtesy of R.E. Birley, Vindolanda Trust)

Where decorative tapestry-woven bands occur as inserts in northern military textiles (one at Vindolanda is madder-red), they tend to be on half-basket weaves - or occasionally on finer (1/1) tabbies. T545, a half-basket weave from Vindolanda, is notable for its tapestry-woven, gamma- shaped insert that indicates - to judge by eastern provincial parallels - that it was once a light cloak.97 In view of the quality of this type of cloth it is not surprising that at Vindolanda its findspots are in the Period III praetorium; a similar link with the officer class may be claimed for the half-basket weaves in the Corbridge hoard.98

The plain 1/1 tabbies (FIG. 8) of the North vary in character and present no coherent impression. The exception is a handful of what were once interpreted as girdle fragments - bands about 6 cm wide with two plain selvedges and with warp more densely packed than weft. They may in fact have been leg bindings or bandages.

Scraps of 2/1 twill appear at both Vindolanda and Corbridge, but represent in all only eight original webs of cloth, of which one was a very rare warp-chevron twill. They are entirely of Z-spun yarn, and fine (14 by 20-23 threads per cm). One has a reinforced selvedge over six

97 Wild 1992b, 66-74. 98 There is another fine half-basket weave from beneath the late Flavian rampart at Castleford: Wild 1998b.



18 J.P. WILD

warp-bundles and a raw edge protected against fraying by 'footweaving', in which the stitches of simple oversewing serve as the 'weft' for twelve extra 'warp-threads' stretched parallel to the cloth's edge.99 Such sophisticated features indicate a commensurate, but at the moment obscure, function.

The lack of flax at Vindolanda is hard to accept at face value; for the prefect and his family must surely have possessed some linen garments. A carbonised fragment of 2/2 chevron twill from Carlisle may be linen100 and a coin from the Flavian fortress at Red House, Corbridge, bears traces of a possibly linen bag.101 The problem may be one of differential survival in bog conditions, but the paucir of linen at early military sites in Egypt suggests that the army, or at least its suppliers, may have given pride of place to wool throughout the Empire at that time.

Besides the tapestry-woven bands and gamma mentioned above there were other means of enlivening the clothing and furnishings of soldiers and their dependents. The Falkirk 'tartan', a herringbone twill with a check pattern composed of dark and light undyed wool yarns, is much quoted.102 There is also a simple check fabric from Vindolanda, now defined merely in terms of dark and light wool yarns, although it once had a touch of lichen purple, too.103 Three diamond twills are 'spin-patterned', marked by subtle stripes in the weft created by alternating bands of S-spun and Z-spun yarn. Pigmented dark and unpigmented white wools were also chosen for tonal contrasts at Vindolanda and Carlisle.104

The quality of the spun yarn and woven fabric from the forts is uniformly excellent; but the execution of hems and seams and of stitching in general is less impressive - at odds even with the find at Vindolanda of a fine needle-case and its contents.105 Raw edges were usually folded over twice and hemmed down with two-ply thread or reinforced by a cord applied and stitched to the edge. Seams included run-and-fell. Many items had been heavily and none-too-expertly patched, perhaps by the soldiers themselves.

Non-woven textiles included felt, originally lining helmets or shoes, and netting constructed in the sprang technique. Two curious fringed 'rain hats' from Vindolanda and Newstead made from the stems of hair moss (Polytrichum commune) are basketry rather than textile objects.106

Environment 2: Colchester

The textile history of Camulodunum-Colchester begins with the presumed royal tumulus at Lexden, excavated in 1924 but recently reassessed and dated to c. 10 B.C.107 Alongside the Medi- terranean imports and/or diplomatic gifts was a small quantity of gold ribbon, probably the sole remains of a cushion tapestry-woven in gold thread and purple wool, like that from the tomb of Philip II at Vergina.'08 The ribbon (c. 0.3 mm wide) was spirally spun in S-direction round a now vanished (?silk) fibre core. Sound, but less exotic, was the medium-fine 2/2 diamond twill (Z/S spun, and felted) spread over the contents of one of the newly excavated high-status graves (1988.4) at Stanway just outside Grymes Dyke. It dates to c. A.D. 50. A comparable fine twill was found in the contemporary 'doctor's' grave at Stanway in 1996.109 In late A.D. 60 Boudican rebels

99 cf. Wild 1970a, 57, fig. 27. l00 Kind information from Penelope Rogers (T8A from Annetwell Street Site A 1983). lo0 Wild 1979b. 102 Wild 1970a, 96-7 A42; Wild 1964b. 103 Taylor 1983, 119-20. 104 Kind information about Carlisle from Penelope Rogers. 105 Frere 1988, 434, pl. XXIIB. Another is reported from the fort at Carlisle (information from T. Padley). 106 cf. Wild 1970a, 59, fig. 51 and newly found sprang at Vindolanda (unpublished); hairmoss: Wild 1994a. 107 Wild 1970a, 132 table H15; Frost 1986, 91, pl. 21. The 'gold tissue' may once have measured over 80 cm by 30 cm. lo8 Flury-Lemberg 1988, 234-7. 109 Crummy, P. 1993, 492-7, esp. 495; Wild 1998a.




set fire to standing timber buildings on the Lion Walk site inside the erstwhile legionary fortress. A mattress lying on the floor in one room was carbonised by the heat. It had a 2/2 diamond twill cover of wool, showing a 14 by 9 thread repeat and possibly spin-patterning.110 On it were pieces of four different plain tabby fabrics. What contemporary linen looked like (fine, Z/Z spun) can be seen on material adhering to a coin from an early Roman extramural grave."'

The gold thread excepted, the above fabrics are what one might expect from early Roman contexts in Britain. For our knowledge of later textiles in the colonia we turn to the cemeteries. The gypsum packing a child's lead coffin found just outside the Balkerne Gate bore impressions and calcified remains of two fine tabby cloths, probably linen, which had been used to shroud the body.112 Six of the graves in the large late Roman cemetery in Butt Road yielded tiny textile fragments. Most were comparatively fine fabrics with weakly Z-spun yarns, apparently linen; but one was unmistakeably a silk tabby with unspun yarns, arguably woven in China.113

Shrouded burials, especially those encased in gypsum or plaster, as at York and Poundbury, commonly incorporated old household linens such as towels (sabana) torn into strips."14 So, while we may be seeing the towels and kerchieves of late Roman Colchester, we do not know what wool clothing the inhabitants had to wear. If the clothed burials at Lankhills, Winchester, are indicative, then robust 2/2 twills were still on the list.'15 The silk at Butt Road may be the remains of a shirt.

INFLUENCES ON TEXTILE STRUCTURE

The technical and cultural influences which affected the character of textiles manufactured in Roman Britain are multifarious. To appreciate them it is necessary to refer to: (1) the textiles of the pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain and northern Europe; (2) the Roman Iron Age finds from the wetlands of Jutland and the settlement at the Feddersen Wierde in Lower Saxony; (3) textiles from Roman Gaul and the two German provinces; (4) site finds from the Mediterranean and eastern Roman provinces.

For the textile industry there is nothing corresponding to the potter's kiln and its associated waster heaps which offer the student of Roman pottery clear guidance on the provenance of wares and forms. Consequently textile archaeologists have to rely on distribution maps of finds, a fairly blunt tool, to determine possible production centres. The controversy about the origin of the fine Viking diamond twills from Scandinavia - ranging from Roman Syria to Viking western Norway - illustrates the problem well.116

Some textiles found in Roman Britain are manifestly intrusive: it would be very difficult (but not absolutely impossible) to maintain that the damask silks from Holboroughl17 and London, the silk tabby from Butt Road, Colchester (see above), the spun gold thread from Lexden, London and Poundbury,118 or the murex-purple cloth from Fordington. Dorchester,119 were locally made. Cloth woven exclusively from S-spun yarn may also come under suspicion.120 But as a rule of thumb it is

110 Wild 1984a. 111 Castle Museum, Colchester Inv. no. 242: cf. Wild 1970a, 92 A13. The late M.R. Hull kindly informed me of a cloth

impression on the side of a Roman pottery kiln which he excavated. 112 Wild 1984a, 44-7, 144-5 with fiche; on late Roman Colchester: Faulkner 1994. 113 Wild 1983, 148 (Grave 77): Wild 1984a, 44-7. 114 e.g. at York: Wild 1970a, 95-6 A36-42; Poundbury, Dorset: Wild 1993b, 112, fiche 1, F1 l-G3; sabana: Erim and

Reynolds 1970, 130-1. 115 Crowfoot 1979, 330-1, fig. 40a, b. 116 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 138-40 (W Norway); Nockert 1988, 77-105 (Syria). 117 Wild 1965; Spitalfields, London (unpublished). 118 Lexden: Frost 1986; Poundbury: Wild 1993b, 112. 119 Unpublished information from E. Crowfoot and Penelope Rogers: Frere 1986, 417. 120 Wild 1970a, 44-5.



20 J.P. WILD

safest to assume that Romano-British finds are Romano-British products unless there are strong indications to the contrary.

In assessing the extent of outside influence attention may be most usefully directed to three features: weave, the structure of borders, and decorative techniques.'21

Weave

The first diamond twills appear in northern Europe in the pre-Roman Iron Age as part of a general rise of interest in the potential of 2/2 twill.122 In the Roman Iron Age village of Feddersen Wierde in Lower Saxony plain 2/2 twill gradually became the most popular structure in the course of the first three centuries A.D.; but in the high-status votive deposits in the bog at Thorsberg, Schleswig- Holstein, dating to around A.D. 200, there is proportionately more diamond twill.123 The high percentage of diamond twills at Vindolanda is thus striking, but not out of keeping with contemporary trends in NW Europe. One assumes that a Roman garrison commanded goods from the region in which it was stationed. Recent finds of two diamond twills of La Thne date from E Yorkshire, one very elaborate, demonstrate the capabilities of British weavers long before the Conquest'24 and there are no grounds for claiming the diamond twills of the northern frontier as proof of Roman technical input. When such fabrics turn up on sites in the eastern provinces, they stand out at once as intrusive, brought thither arguably by Roman troops from the West.'25

By contrast there are no textiles in basket weave or half-basket weave belonging to the pre-Roman Iron Age and very few from Roman Iron Age Europe.126 The two related structural forms may be regarded in Britain as Roman introductions. Fabrics in half-basket weave at Vindolanda have additional features typical of the Mediterranean (see below); but that does not make them necessarily direct imports. Be that as it may, the weave occurs very frequently in later Roman contexts in Britain, and it has often been recorded in impressions on tiles, indicating its currency in all sectors of society.127

The milieu of 2/1 twill is less easy to characterise. It was evidently reserved for special fabrics in Roman Britain, but examples are found occasionally in Free Germany, too,128 and there is one Hallstatt piece from Southern Germany.129 Two of the Free German twills have starting borders similar to those on standard 2/2 twills in NW Europe. When the thread-counts of the known Roman-period 2/1 twills are examined, a marked difference can be observed between the eastern Roman and the western Roman world - and those from Free Germany are indistinguishable from the latter.'30 In Britain, therefore, the weave may be ascribed to the native repertoire rather than one directly inspired by Mediterranean practice.

Borders

A distinction can be drawn between the ways in which the weavers of Gaul and Britain and

121 For textile acculturation in Britain: Wild 1979a, 123-31 and in northern Europe: Wild 1988a, 65-98; for a partial corpus of Iron Age textiles in Britain see Bender Jorgensen 1992, 25, 198-9.

122 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 124. 123 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 60-2, 128 fig. 154. 124 Skipwith Common: Bender Jorgensen 1992, 198; Burton Fleming: Crowfoot 1991, 120 fig. 79 A-C. 125 e.g. at Masada: Sheffer and Granger Taylor 1994, 237. Indications of twill-weaving traditions specific to the eastern

provinces are only slowly being recognised: Mons Claudianus: Bender Jorgensen 1991, 89-91; Dura-Europos: Pfister and Bellinger 1945, 43 nos 181-7; Schmidt-Colinet et al. 2000, 23.

126 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 67. 127 In later Roman burials: e.g. Poundbury: Crowfoot 1993, 112; on tiles: e.g. Carsington: Ling 1990, 48; Beauport Park:

Wild 1988d. 128 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 66. 129 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 56, 228; Hundt 1963. 130 Wild 1988a, 77 fig. 1.




weavers in the eastern provinces chose to construct their starting-borders, finishing borders, and (side-)selvedges. Their respective technical predilections reach far back into the prehistory of barbarian Europe and the Hellenistic East.131 Eastern provincial (and probably pan-Mediter- ranean) features eventually adopted in Britain included reinforced selvedges over warp-bundles (with or without weft wrapping),132 the corded finish,133 and perhaps the twined-cord starting- border (FIG. 7).134 The Verulamium flat-woven starting-border135 and the Vindolanda hollow selvedge'36 on the other hand were native to Britain and Iron Age North-West Europe.

Decoration

Decorative techniques can be similarly assigned to source, but with due caution. The art of tapestry-weaving bands and figured inserts is unequivocally Mediterranean, and in the later Roman period it served increasingly as the vehicle for conspicuous display in clothing.137 The finds from Britain, however, from Vindolanda, the London Walbrook, and possibly Winterbourne Earls (Dorset), are modest monochrome bands and there is no reason to suspect that they were woven outside the province,138 although the impetus to weave them clearly spread from much further south. Check patterns were perceived by the Romans as characteristically Celtic, and in fact they are found on clothing throughout pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age Europe.139 The check No. 10 from Vindolanda and the 'Falkirk tartan' would fit neatly into a northern native context.140 Spin patterning is another more subtle approach favoured by Iron Age European weavers which simply continued after the advent of Roman political control.141 Rome evidently added modestly to the existing British modes of textile ornament; but the embroidery on the La Thne diamond twill from Burton Fleming (Yorks.)142 is not paralleled later in Roman Britain - indeed embroidery is a very rare technique in the Roman world as a whole - and it raises the question of whether Roman taste led to the disappearance of some Iron Age techniques as well as encouraging the influx of new ideas.

In sum, one can identify with fair confidence a small number of features of Romano-British textiles which can be attributed to Mediterranean influence. The substrate, however, remains firmly rooted in Iron Age tradition, as is true of clothing fashion,143 and the striking parallels between many of the weaving conventions of the province and those of contemporary Free Germany warn us against overestimating the extent of outside influence. To a Syrian or Egyptian the clothing and furnishings of Roman Britain would have looked exceedingly dull. There were bright colours, to be sure; but the fancy weaves of the eastern provinces - weft-faced compound tabby, brocaded and pile-decorated furnishings, resist-dyed and elaborate tapestry hangings - belong to a different world.

131 Wild 1988a, 76-7 with literature. 132 Wild 1988a, 78 fig. 2; cf. Hornsby and Laverick 1932, 209, 211, pl. VIII (Goldsborough, Yorks.) and examples from

Lackford, Suffolk (unpublished report by E. Crowfoot) and from Vindolanda (discussed above). 133 From the London Walbrook: Wild 1970a, 56 A44 (but being S/S spun it might be intrusive); from Vindolanda

(unpublished); cf. Yadin 1963, 202; Bergman 1975, 33 fig. 30. 134 At Purton, Wilts. (late Roman): unpublished report by Penelope Rogers and J.P. Wild; cf. Bergman 1975, 31 fig. 27. 135 Verulamium starting-border: Wild 1970a, 99 A49, figs 26-9; cf. Schlabow 1976, Abb. 65, 71, 85, 96, 138. 136 Vindolanda (unpublished): cf. Wild 1970a, 113f. B59 (Mainz); Wild 1988a, 79. 137 Wild 1967b; Wild 1970a, 54-5; for clothing with rich tapestry-woven decoration see for example the mosaics at

Piazza Armerina: Carandini et al. 1982. 138 Vindolanda: Wild 1977, 11 no. 17; Wild 1993a, 79-80 (T545) and four more unpublished pieces; Walbrook: Wild

1975, 138-43; Winterbourne Earls: unpublished report by E. Crowfoot. 139 Wild 1964b; cf. Hald 1980, 188 tables H, I. 140 Wild 1977, 7-8; Wild 1970a, 96-7 A42, pl. VIb. 141 At Vindolanda: Wild 1977, 27 nos 28, 37, 39 and others unpublished; cf. Bender Jorgensen 1986, 300, 303, 306. 142 Crowfoot 1991, 120 fig. 79A-C. 143 Wild 1968a, 234.



22 J.P. WILD

CLOTH FINISHING

Roman taste demanded that clothing was clean, neatly (and visibly) pressed, and for formal occasions pure white.144 It was the fuller's task to meet these requirements: his metier was the finishing and laundering of wool cloth, and he was a prominent figure among urban craftsmen.145 Italian fullers' workshops (fullonicae), typified by the well-appointed establishments at Ostia,146 contained banks of terracotta tubs for treading cloth in a solution of water and urine or fuller's earth and large open rinsing tanks with running water. Less visible archaeologically is the evidence for some supplementary finishing techniques: the raising and trimming of a soft nap, bleaching whites with sulphur, and pressing laundered garments in a screw-press.147

The evidence for Roman Britain is slim. No fuller's plant has yet been securely identified - but that is not for want of trying.'48 Most of it would have been of timber, much of it portable.149 However, the raising and trimming of a nap on wool cloth is attested: the cropping shears from Great Chesterford, Cambs.,s15 support the conclusion to be drawn from linguistic sources on the currency of tunicae pexae, soft-finished shirts, in the province.'5' Stronger support still is to be drawn from the textile corpus of Vindolanda where most of the heavy and medium weight diamond twills have or had an unmistakable nap.

Linen cloth was not intensively fulled, but could be sun-bleached and glazed with a polishing glass ('slick stone').152 The basic cleaning and shrinking of wool cloth could be undertaken by wearer or weaver at home.153 Epigraphic sources for the Rhineland, however, indicate a fullers' guild at Cologne and a professional fuller in the modest vicus at Alzey,154 so it is fair to assume that the townsfolk of Roman Britain were also served by professional fullers.

END-USES

The functional distinction between clothing and soft furnishings was less marked in antiquity than it is today.'55 A simple rectangle of cloth, for instance, could double as a cloak and a blanket: in Diocletian's Edict the sagumfibulatorium, 'sagum fastened with a brooch', is distinguished from the much cheaper plain sagum, which was probably a blanket.'56 On the other hand, the Roman weaver had a clear notion, before weaving began, of the ultimate function of the item to be woven. Clothes, even sleeved tunics, were woven in one piece on the loom and tailoring (and its concomitant waste) was minimal.157 Cloth was virtually never sold by the yard, a fundamental difference between ancient and medieval practice.

The most obvious source of information on function is the preserved textiles themselves. As a

144 Granger-Taylor 1987; Wild 1992c, 96-9; white: Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. candidus (sense 4a). 145 Wild 1970a, 82-6; Forbes 1956, 86-9 for a medley of classical references. 146 Pietrogrande 1976. 147 Wild 1970a, 82-6; Moeller 1976, 19-27. 148 e.g. at Chichester: Wilson, A.E. 1952, 167; for fuller's earth see Robertson 1986. 149 As on the fuller's tombstone at Sens: Wild 1970a, fig. 73a. 150 VCH Essex III (1963), pl. IIIA (top right). 151 Wild 1967a; Middle Welsh peis, Modern Welsh pais is derived, not from the Vulgar Latin paxsa (which need not be

taken literally, but is virtually a synonym for 'tunic'), but from formal Latin pexa: Tomlin 1988, 74. 152 If polishing glasses ('linen smoothers') are accepted as Roman: Wild 1970a, 85; cf. Walton Rogers 1997, 1775-9. 153 Lucas 1968. 154 CIL XIII, 8345; XIII, 6264. 155 Ulpian quoted in Dig. 34.2.24. 156 Edictum Diocletiani xix.65-8, 72-3. The distinction is echoed now in a new document from Vindolanda: Bowman and

Thomas 1996, 300-7 no. 1, lines 3-4. 157 Granger-Taylor 1982.




rule, however, only smaller items are found complete enough to be recognised. The shoe insoles from Vindolanda and the Grewelthorpe bog burial, the sock from Vindolanda, and the headband from Poundbury fall into this category."15 The narrow wool bands from military sites served probably as winter leg-wrappings; the unusual linen twill from Carpow was the backing for scale armour.159 The cadaver in one of the York gypsum burials had been shrouded in parts of a towel.160 Inevitably most rags have no diagnostic features: the study of wear patterns characteristic of specific garments may ultimately prove helpful in suggesting use.161

Textile repair and recycling are well documented in the Roman world. Worn or damaged garments were patched with greater or lesser care, and, when they were beyond redemption, the serviceable parts were salvaged and converted into something else.162 One can quote the conversion of the light wool cloak T545 at Vindolanda163 and the common recycling of linens into purse linings, money bags and shrouds.164

Two other sources - representations of textiles in Romano-British art and textile terms in written documents - throw light on end-uses. But it is rarely possible - and the attempt is always hazardous - to match a specific textile which appears in one source with its (apparent) appearance in another. Some years ago I reviewed the representational evidence for the clothing of Roman Britain, primarily on the tombstones, and it will suffice here to summarise the conclusions.165

The principal body-garment of the province was the 'Gallic coat', a wide-fitting tunic with or without short wide sleeves (FIG. 9). Worn by both sexes, it reached to calf level on men, to the ankles on women. Preserved examples in Gaul and North Germany indicate that it was of wool, woven in one piece on the loom.166 Over it men wore a voluminous sleeveless hooded cape (caracalla or birrus) fastened down the front; in plan it was probably a segment of a circle. Added to this ensemble for men, in art if not so often in real life, was a heavy scarf around the neck. Women did not wear the cape, but a simple rectangular cloak, variously draped. Conservative ladies covered their hair with a bonnet or hairnet.

Soldiers could be recognised by their shorter tight-fitting tunics (often with long sleeves) and rectangular cloaks, draped around the shoulders and fastened on the right shoulder with a brooch.

Fashion changes in the third century led to a vogue among the landed aristocracy and government office-holders for gaudier, more expensive, styles of dress. Loose fitting tunics (dalmaticae), at first sight identical to the Gallic coat, were embellished down front and back with tapestry-woven clavi, bands, more elaborate than those that had been current in early Roman Italy. Length still marked the sex of the wearer. Military shirts, worn with a prominent belt, were resplendent, not just with clavi, but with tapestry roundels and cuff trimmings - and they became the uniform of the civilian hierarchy too. Larger, heavier, cloaks were now preferred.

Direct representational evidence for soft furnishing is meagre in Roman Britain.167 Roman houses were sparsely furnished anyway. There are indications that furnishing fabrics with fancy weaves were acceptable where eye-catching clothing was not, at least not until the Late Empire. Beds equipped with comfortable mattresses, pillows, cushions and coverlets feature in funerary

158 Vindolanda: Wild 1993a, 84, pl. XII; Grewelthorpe: Wild 1991b, 197-201; Poundbury: Crowfoot 1993. 159 Wild 1977, 6-7, 27, pls 2-3; Carpow: Wild 1981. 160 Wild 1970a, 95-6 A39. 161 Cooke and Lomas 1990; Cork et al. 1997; Wild et al. 1998, 86-9. 162 e.g. Wild 1977, 9 no. 12; cf. Sheffer and Granger-Taylor 1994, 184 43i(C), 43ii(C), fig. 55; 206 14(Q), fig. 101; Cooke

and Lomas 1990, 226; Cato, Agr. 59. 163 Wild 1992b. 164 e.g. the bag containing the Oldcroft hoard: Rhodes, J. 1974, 73-4. 165 Wild 1968a; an update in Wild 1985. 166 Wild 1985, 370-1; Ferdiere 1984, 264-6. 167 Liversidge 1955, 53-7.



24 J.P. WILD

<

WARP >

a b Slm

FIG. 9. The Gallic coat and cape, the standard male garb of the civilian population: (a) coat (with arms outstretched) under hooded cape, drawn up; (b) outline of a surviving Gallic coat from Reepsholt (Ostfriesland); (c) outline of a late

Roman cape (possibly a birrus) from Egypt. Broken lines denote lines of folds.

art, together with curtains. While there were no carpets on the floor, some may have had wall- hangings - indeed, the row of orantes in arcades painted on the wall of the Lullingstone house- chapel strikingly echoes surviving tapestry-woven and pile hangings from Roman Egypt.168 Additionally one might expect household items like towels and handkerchieves and utilities such as horse-trappings, sacks and sails.

168 Meates 1987, 11-41; Ling 1989; cf. Flury-Lemberg 1988, 364-81 cat. no. 93, 402-5 cat. no. 71.




Over the past twenty-five years the finds of wooden leaf tablets at Vindolanda169 and lead and pewter curse tablets at Bath,170 and similar documents elsewhere have opened a new perspective on Romano-British clothing and textile vocabulary (Table 1).

The military wardrobe revealed so far for Vindolanda is both socially and functionally com- prehensive. The formal dress of the officers' mess could come straight from the pages of Juvenal or Petronius: the synthesis, dinner suit, comprised matching tunic and cloak171 and there is mention of a cenatoria and a cubitoria, both formal attire, perhaps topped by an abolla or laena, cloak.172 Body garments include vest (subucula) and underpants (subligar), tunic (tunica) and shirt (stica).173 The sagum, the standard soldier's cloak, and sagacia (meaning undefined, but related) crop up frequently in the purchase records, as does the comparable palliolum.174 The hooded cape, paenula, is listed, as is the sudarium, a towel (perhaps worn round the neck), and udones, leggings.175

The garrison commanders provided themselves with lodices, blankets, presumably of an expensive variety, and large scarlet, green, purple and perhaps yellow vela, curtains or 'drapes'.176 On sale locally were bedoces, curtains or coverlets, and tosseae, rugs;177 both bedox and tossea (tossia) are Celtic terms, the textiles presumably British.178 Bedox is glossed as velum, curtain, in Diocletian's Edict.179 A tossia is mentioned in a legal document from Carlisle180 and a tossia Brit(annica) was among the presents given to Sennius Sollemnis in A.D. 220 on his retirement from a British governor's staff.181

While the Vindolanda tablets must reflect what is called above 'Textile environment 1', the clothing thieves stigmatised on the curse tablets from the baths at Aquae Sulis were operating in a context that matched 'Textile environment 2' - civilian, urban, and moderately affluent. Though the Bath defixiones start only a century later than the Vindolanda records, there is little overlap in garment terminology between the two sites (Table 1).

Bathers lost their shirt (paxsa, possibly paxsa balnearis, bathing shirt), frequently their cloak (pallium), and sometimes their caracalla, a hooded cape which may correspond to the cape of the tombstones.182 A capitularis, headband, a mafortium, veil, and manicilia, mittens, also went missing in suspicious circumstances.183 Two bathers who brought a caballaris, (horse) blanket, perhaps to sit on, went home without it.184

169 Bowman and Thomas 1983; 1994. 170 Tomlin 1988. 171 Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 196; cf. Dig. 34.2.38. 172 Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 195, 4, 5; 196, 6; cf. Potthoff 1992, 131-5. 173 Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 196, 11; 346, i, 4; 195, 1; 196, 16, 18; 207, 8, 10, 13; 255, 10. Stica (181,4) seems to be

the first mention in Latin of the long-sleeved military shirt, the oi'ti1 in the eastern army (Baur et al. 1933, 100, 103), strictoria in Diocletian's Edict vii.56-7; xix.10-11; xx.1-2; xxvi.28.

174 Sagum: Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 192, 8; 207, 2; 255, 9 (at Carlisle: Tomlin 1992, 148; 1998, 16 no. 24); sagacia: 184, 20; 207, 3; 255, 8-9; palliolum: 207, 9, 12; 255, 9-10.

175 Paenula: Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 196, 3, 5; sudarium: 184, 6, 10, 28, 34, 37; cf. Suetonius, Nero 51; Wild 1968a, 180; udones: Bowman and Thomas 1983, 38, 1.

176 Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 196, 2; Bowman and Thomas 1996, 300-5 I.i.19-22. 177 Bowman and Thomas 1994, no. 192, 2, 6; 439, 10. 178 Wild 1968a, 228. 179 xix.56, 58. 180 Tomlin 1992, 148. 181 CIL XIII, 3162 col. II. 182 Paxsa: Tomlin 1988, no. 32, 3; 62, 2; pallium: 32, 3, 13; 43, 3; 62, 2; 64, 3 (cf. Tomlin 1993, 129 Tablet 62 (Uley); RIB

I, 323 (Caerleon)); caracalla: 10, 6, 16; 65, 4; cf. Wild 1986a, 352-3. 183 Capitularis: Tomlin 1988, no. 55, 5; cf. Hassall and Tomlin 1982, 408-9 (cape(t)olare from Venta Icenorum/Caistor

St Edmund); Tomlin 1993, 116 (capit(u)larem from Uley); Crawford and Reynolds 1979, 176 for definition: cf. Edictum Diocletiani xxviii.7 (ed. Lauffer 1971) = xxvi.204 (ed. Giacchero 1974); mafortium: Tomlin 1988, no. 61, 5; manicilia: Tomlin 1988, no. 5, 2 and at Uley: Hassall and Tomlin 1996, 439-41, fig. 1.

184 Tomlin 1988, no. 49, 1; 62, 7.



26 J.P. WILD

TABLE 1. TEXTILE VOCABULARY FROM ROMAN BRITAIN

Vindolanda Bath Elsewhere

BODY GARMENTS

tunica, 'tunic' (x17) paxsa, 'tunic' stica, 'shirt'

balniaris, 'bathing tunic' dalmatica, 'dalmatic' (Thorigny)

(tunica) cenatoria, 'dinner (tunic)' cubitori[?a], 'dinner (?dress)' sunthesi[na], 'dinner-suit/?-tunic' synthesis, 'dinner suit' subpaenula, 'under-a-cape' (x?2) subucula, 'vest' (x2) subligar, 'loin cloth' (x2 pairs) lumbare, 'loin cloth' (x 10)

ACCESSORIES

capitulare, 'head band' (x5) capitularis cape[t]olare (Venta Icenorum) capit(u)laris (Uley)

sudarium, 'neckerchief (x5) mafortium, 'veil'

udones, 'leggings' (x2 pairs) ocriae (x2)(Venta) fascia, 'band' (Venta)

manicilia (pl.), 'mittens' manicilii (Uley)

OUTER GARMENTS

paenula, 'cape' (x4+) caracalla, 'cape'

birrus, 'cape' (Diocletian's Edict) abolla, 'cloak (for dining ?)' (x2) laena, 'cloak (for dining ?) la[ena] sagum, 'cloak' (x 10) sagum sagum (xlO+)(Carlisle) (sagum) infibulatorium, 'cloak' (x6) sagum corticium, 'cloak of ?bark' (x15) sagacia, '?cloak' (x2+) superaria, 'outer garment' (x2+)

pallium, 'cloak' palleum (Caerleon) palliolum, 'cloak/blanket' (x24) amictus, 'cloak' (Venta)

chlamys, 'cloak' (Thorigny)

SOFT FURNISHINGS

bedox, 'coverlet/curtain' tossea, 'rug' (x4) tossia (Carlisle)

tapete, 'rug' (Diocletian's Edict) caballaris, ' "horse" blanket' stragulum, 'bed sheet'

lodix, 'blanket' (x 2) velum, 'curtain/hanging' (x 5)

mappa, 'napkin (London) sabanum, 'towel' (London) lintiamen, 'linen' (Uley)




A number of documents from elsewhere add to the clothing list. At Caistor St Edmund a pair of leggings (duae ocriae) went astray, as did afascia, band, and amictus, cloak. Sennius Sollemnis on retiring to Gaul was presented with a dalmatica, a wide fitting tunic, made at Canusium in Southern Italy, and a chlamys, the officer's half-moon cloak.185 Typically late Roman, such fash- ions were evidently paraded in Britain as early as A.D. 220.

The British birrus of Diocletian's Edict was a hooded cape distinct from the caracalla, but otherwise hard to characterise. My suggestion that it had an extra flap protecting the throat may be borne out by a surviving cape with this feature from Egypt (FIG. 9c), now in Philadelphia (USA).186 The British tapete, rug, is equally hard to define; it is tempting to equate it with the tossia.187

Soft furnishings included items of linen such as a mappa, kerchief, and a sabanum, towel, imported from Alexandria, in London and an ill-defined lintiamen, linen sheet, at Uley.188

Very few of the sources quoted above give anyhint of the material from which the textiles were made. That most were of wool seems plausible. A number of general points, however, emerge from this trawl through the terminology. Britons were familiar with almost the entire range of metropolitan Roman clothing - including the toga, if we can credit Tacitus.189 A significant proportion of the textiles, moreover, to judge from the etymology of their names, had an origin in Western Europe, such as the birrus, caracalla, sagum, tossia, bedox.190 In evaluating the technological and economic status of the extant textile fragments, therefore, one must be as keenly aware of the imperial dimension as of the European Iron Age roots.

ECONOMIC QUESTIONS

INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

The paucity of evidence for the Romano-British textile industry poses acute problems when questions are raised about social and economic infrastructure. Not unnaturally, the archaeologist is tempted to refer to the well documented medieval textile industry of NW Europe, on which there is a wealth of primary sources and secondary discussions. The temptation has to be resisted, or at least its risks acknowledged; for the introduction before A.D. 1000 of the horizontal loom equipped with harness and treadles, reed and shuttle, and the appearance of the spinning wheel and hand-cards - not to mention the change from weaving clothes to weaving cloth - so enhanced textile output that a largely new economic infrastructure for the industry emerged, marked by increased division of labour and full-time specialist crafts.191 By contrast, the usual starting-point for the Roman period is A.H.M. Jones' much quoted survey of the 'cloth industry', which in fact does less than justice to the sources. Little archaeological evidence was accessible to him in 1960; but on any showing the textile industry was not static or uniform either technically or organis- ationally, as he implied.192

Observation of the situation in other provinces with a richer surviving record may be helpful. Moreover, the pottery industry has increasingly been used pars pro toto to reconstruct the face of

185 Hassall and Tomlin 1982, 408-9; CIL XIII, 3162 col. II; Wild 1968a, 222-3, 225-6. 186 Wild 1963, 193-202, esp. 196; Granger-Taylor 1982, 21. 187 Edictum Diocletiani xix.28; Wild 1968a, 228-9. 188 Tomlin 1999, 106-7; Tomlin 1993, 121-3 no. 2. 189 Agricola 21. 190 Wild 1968a, 229-34. 191 Cardon 1999. 192 Jones, A.H.M. 1974.



28 J.P. WILD

the provincial economy.193 Peacock proposed in 1982 a hypothetical scheme for the industry which gives much food for thought.194 He recognised six modes of production, in effect a sliding scale on which six horizons can be named in ascending order of economic complexity: household production, household industry, individual workshops, nucleated workshops, the manufactory and lastly - but only after the Industrial Revolution - the factory. The distinctions between modes are blurred. He added two more: estate production and military/official production. Both, however, could be set on the existing spectrum; for they stand apart principally by being directed by figures with no hands-on involvement in production.

In employing Peacock's scheme as a stalking-horse against which to examine the organisation of the textile industry it is important to bear in mind how deeply textile manufacture was embedded in an agricultural matrix. I have argued the point for Gaul in archaeological terms, and Erdkamp has independently expressed a similar view on historical grounds, but for a broader canvas.195 The heavy mineral-based, fire-dependent industries have a significantly different milieu, and that is reflected in their infrastructure.

Such provisos aside, Peacock's 'estate production' is the mode most likely to be applicable to textiles in the NW provinces. The British evidence for villa-based textile making may be thin - a set of loomweights from Bucknowle in Dorset,196 woolcombs at Gorhambury and Stanwick,197 the ubiquitous spindle-whorls - but if something akin to the Gallic situation can be adduced, Romano-British villa owners may have been responsible for a considerable proportion of the provincial output.

The famous third-century funerary pillar of the Secundinii at Igel near Trier in Gallia Belgica offers a snapshot of some key organisational aspects of wool textile production on a landed estate.198 No technical process is depicted, but the scenes comprising the textile narrative cover two principal activities: the arrival and examining of textiles at a central place (the villa?), and their packing into bales and transport by land and water. A relief above the central panel on the front of the pillar shows older bearded men bringing textiles for the staff of the Secundinii to check for quality and record as received. In another scene the men appear to be receiving payment. They may be tenants living on the estate or in dependent settlements and undertaking in due season, together with family members, each of the manufacturing stages up to and including weaving. I do not follow John Drinkwater in seeing the Secundinii as clothiers in a medieval sense, with province-wide influence in every aspect of textile production and sale, but regard them as major landowners who are using seasonally available labour to convert a raw product from their estates (sheep's wool) into profitable finished goods.199

Reliefs from less well preserved and/or more modest monuments scattered across northern Gaul tell a similar story.200 The key scene is one of cloth examining, which also serves as a visual advertisement for the textiles on sale. (They are usually cloaks, but occasionally tunics or Gallic coats.201) Quality control was obviously important to the estate entrepreneur202 and its main- tenance is reflected not just in the high quality of the surviving wool textiles but also in the strong indications of standardisation, already evident for example in the diamond twills of Vindolanda.203

193 Fulford 1989; Millett 1990, 157-74. 194 Peacock 1982, 8-11. Its possible relevance to textiles was noted by Fulford 1989, 190. 195 Wild 1999; Erdkamp 1999. 196 Collins et al. 1986, 2. 197 Neal et al. 1990, 140 no. 410, fig. 132; Frere 1988, 453. Another 16 finds are from roadside settlements. 198 Drinkwater 1982. 199 Wild 1999, 34 (with literature). 200 Vicari 1996; Schwinden 1987; Baltzer 1983. 201 Roche-Bernard 1993, 21. 202 Schwinden 1989, 289-305; Baltzer 1983, 40-5. 203 Bender Jorgensen 1992, 126-33; Wild 1993a.




Such tests for consistency must underpin the reputation of the birrus Britannicus and the tapete Britannicum outside Britain as demonstrated in Diocletian's Edict.204

On the smaller farms and agricultural holdings still operating in the Late Iron Age mode (roughly approximating to the lower end of Peacock's scale) few textiles would have been produced for sale as opposed to home consumption, unless there was the stimulus of supplying the Roman army (see below) or working for an absentee landlord. The seasonal nature of textile tasks would have been obvious in this context, the season beginning with sheep shearing or plucking in May to July or the flax and hemp harvest in August to September.205 Fibre preparation would probably have commenced immediately, for neither fleeces nor bast fibres improve with storage. Spinning which would have involved all female members of a household was a potential production bottleneck if weaving were to take place before the spring sowing. In peasant communities division of labour by gender is unlikely to have been as marked as in the Roman upper class:206 even if spinning was a female preserve, male and female weavers are both mentioned in the sources relating to Roman Gaul.207 Activities such as dyeing and fulling are illustrated by the archaeological remains of well-equipped workshops in the metropolitan urban centres;208 but both processes could be adequately carried out in a backyard environment with simple portable containers, as medieval and early modern practice demonstrates.209

What role the towns of Roman Britain played in the textile industry as distinct from textile marketing is hard to discern. There is now less enthusiasm for Finley's concept of the 'consumer city' in the Classical world,210 but efforts to identify 'producer cities' are so far only successful in the eastern provinces.211 Larger cosmopolitan centres such as London may have attracted weavers of gold and purple tapestry, even silk damask, together with dyers, fullers, woolcombers and sellers of dyed and washed wool and hackled flax, in addition to domestic spinners and weavers.212 The smaller towns such as Durobrivae-Water Newton and roadside settlements may in effect have been estate villages and so annexed to the villa economies.213

In the eastern provinces and Italy the Edict of Diocletian lists the provenances of textiles under the names of towns, tribal areas and provinces; but in the western provinces only tribes and whole provinces feature. Whatever mechanisms defined the character and guaranteed the quality of the goods in the West had a less specific base than a town. What that means for the provinces of Britain in A.D. 301 is uncertain.214

Peacock's 'military/official production' is clearly echoed in the founding, probably under Diocletian, of a gynaeceum (originally 'women's' quarters), a production centre for the wool garments required by the garrison, but no longer available in sufficient quantity on the open market by purchase or requisition.215 Based at 'Venta' according to the Notitia Dignitatum - either Caistor- by-Norwich or (on balance more likely) Winchester - it probably comprised workshops and a central administration, possibly in requisitioned buildings, for putting out work to local operatives. Whether there was a communal weaving shed in addition is debateable. The output of the gynaeceum would have been the standard sleeved shirts, cloaks, and blankets of the later Roman army.

204 Edictum Diocletiani xix.37-8; xix.28-35. 205 Webster 1938, 104-10; Freckmann et al. 1979, 65, 77. 206 Scheidel 1995, 205-6; Larsson Lov6n 1998. 207 Schwinden 1987; cf. Roche-Bernard 1993, 144; Alfaro Giner 1984, 93, 105 lam.VII; but cf. Moeller 1969. 208 Moeller 1976; Jongman 1991, 155-72; Pietrogrande 1976; Wild 1999, 34; Laurence 1994, 63-4. 209 Jenkins 1972, pl. 11, 2; Walton 1991, 332-7. 210 Finley 1985, 123-49; Whittaker 1990. 211 Pleket 1988, 1998; Engels 1990, 131-42; Parkins 1997; but see now Erdkamp 2001. 212 Wild 1999, 33; Wild forthcoming. 213 Whittaker 1990, 115-16; Millett 1990, 210-11; Wild 1974, 151, fig. 1, 2. 214 Wild 1999, 34. 215 Wild 1976.



30 J.P. WILD

TRADE AND EXCHANGE

As noted above, a small handful of textiles (not all high-value) can be claimed as 'intrusive' to Britain on material or structural grounds - damask silks in London and Holborough, plain silk at Colchester, murex-purple dyed wool at Dorchester, gold-and-purple tapestry in London, and fabrics with S-spun yarn in both warp and weft, such as the Walbrook herringbone twill and linen in the Snettisham hoard.216 (The nearest region to spin regularly in S-direction was Spain,217 but S/S cloth is standard in the eastern provinces.) Since the textile-technical traditions of the Celtic-speaking provinces are relatively uniform, movement of goods originating in the region but travelling across provincial boundaries within it is hard to trace.218

Washed wool has been cited above as a traded commodity and the Skye bale of green-dyed wool may represent another; but most textile transactions would have involved recognisable, finished or semi-finished garments or household textiles, not bolts of cloth. The rectangular cloaks (saga), which could double as blankets, may possibly have had an intermediate position. They dominate the cloth-examining vignettes on Gallic funerary monuments, as we have seen, and many Gallic merchants call themselves sagarii. Saga could have been cut up and converted into tailored garments such as bracae, trousers.219

Textile materials were recycled on a large scale, as the rubbish deposits at Vindolanda and the middens associated with the contemporary forts in Egypt's Eastern Desert attest. Cato's parsimonious recycling of his workers' used clothing may have been a common practice.220

The mechanisms whereby textiles moved within, into, and out of Britain were multifarious. On a personal level textiles migrated on their owner's back, during changes of unit for example in the frontier garrisons.221 Syrians, like Barates of Palmyra, bringing minor luxuries from home could account for the finds of silk and gold-and-purple tapestry.222 Leaving presents such as Sennius Sollemnis received from the governor of Britain and other official largitio (echoes of a socially embedded economy) increasingly included prestigious clothing.223 Gifts and loans or private sales of garments eased military life on the northern frontier;224 there is no direct evidence for Britain on how the military clothing levies operated.225

Sale of clothing and soft furnishings at regular and periodic markets and the widespread peddling of such wares may be presumed. In Gaul some merchants specialised in particular commodities (e.g. paenularii), while others were general clothing purveyors (vestiarii).226 A certain Gavo (whose occupation is unstated) appears in the records at Vindolanda as selling cloaks, tunics and other items in wholesale quantities.227 Like the negotiatores Britanniciani plying between the Rhine and eastern Britain, he handled several types of commodity, not just one.228 He may have followed on land the Roman shippers' practice of carrying mixed cargoes in which the textiles travelled parasitically on more fragile or valuable loads.229

216 Damasks: Wild 1965 and unpublished (Spitalfields); Colchester: Wild 1983; Dorchester: unpublished information from P. Rogers; S/S yarns: Wild 1970a, 97-8 A44; Wild 1997.

217 Alfaro Giner 1984, 81-2 (but based on a limited database). 218 Wild 1988a, pace Bender Jorgensen 1988. 219 Skye bale: Wild 1970a, 23, pl. XIc; shape: Granger-Taylor 1982; Wild 1999, 31; merchants: Schlippschuh 1974,

49-51. 220 Cato, de agri cultura 59; cf. Lemire 1996, 95-120; Crowfoot et al. 1992, 3-4. 221 Holder 1982; Birley 1993, 4-9. 222 RIB I, no. 1065; Toynbee 1962, pl. 85. 223 CIL XIII, 3162 col. II; Johansen 1994. 224 Bowman and Thomas 1994, 335-6 no. 346, 166-170 no. 196. 225 Wild 1976a, 55; McGing 1995, 110-11; Sheridan 1998, 81-105. 226 De Ligt 1993; Schlippschuh 1974, 40-55; Vicari 1996. 227 Bowman and Thomas 1994, 29-30, 159-61 no. 192, 178-80 no. 207. 228 Hassall and Tomlin 1977, 430; Stuart and Bogaers 1971, no. 45; Wild 1978a; Chastagnol 1981; Bogaers 1983. 229 Middleton 1979; Fulford 1989, 180; Millett 1990, 158-9; but cf. Will 1987.




PRODUCTION OUTPUT AND CAPABILITY

The entire population of Roman Britain (currently estimated at some 3.7 million)230 was the customer-base of the province's textile producers. Many, it must be said, were poor customers, buying or acquiring new garments at very long intervals and making do, mending, and recycling what they possessed. The funerary monuments, however, display a well-clad populace, at least in the upper social registers.231

The standing army in Britain, estimated at c. 45,000 at its peak under Hadrian,232 is the most clearly definable consumer-group and so may repay closer scrutiny. Soldiers were in no position to make their own clothing or bedding, and they or their followers were inept with a needle;233 but they may have enjoyed some support in the vici.234 The government was under an obligation to supply them with clothing and blankets, for which their wages were docked;235 but the authorities in turn found difficulties in meeting their obligations, and there was scope for private entrepreneurs like Gavo at Vindolanda.236 At least in Egypt military orders delivered to weavers led later to requisitioning and compulsory purchase at a disadvantageous price, and that opened the door in the fourth century to the vestis militaris, an outright tax.237

It is arguable that each soldier could nominally expect a new outfit each year, consisting in Britain of a wool tunic (tunica), cloak (sagum), and blanket (?palliolum) (Table 1). A set of clothing seems to have been the annual entitlement for quarry workers in Roman Egypt.238 Cato, however, issued his farmworkers with a new tunic and cloak in alternate years,239 and new clothes every two years are, realistically, what the British army may have received. If so, one might suggest (extremely tentatively) that weavers and spinners in Britain were expected to produce some 22,500 tunics, cloaks and blankets per year for the army alone. How does this translate into man/womanpower, man/womanhours and allied demands on the province's resources?

Reliable figures on which to base any calculation are scarce. A papyrus from Philadelphia (Egypt) indicates that it took three men and one woman assistant six days to weave a single linen sheet,240 say twenty man/woman-days' work for one household. Taking these figures, some 67,500 households would have annually devoted about three weeks of a member's labour weaving to clothe the army. More relevant to Britain are the recent results of the experimental weaving on a warp-weighted loom of a copy of the Roman Iron Age cloak in wool twill (measuring 2 m by 1.5 m) from Vejen in South Jutland.241 It absorbed thirty-six woman-days' work (292 hours), and ultimately weighed about 1360 g - remarkably close to the weight prescribed for a military blanket (lodix) of c. 2.66 m by 1.78 m in second-century Egypt.242 A wool tunic mentioned in the same document weighed slightly, but not significantly, less. Accordingly, five to six weeks weaving time might be a more appropriate figure to quote for the weaving of each of the 67,500 requisitioned items in Roman Britain. Not included here are the hours of yarn spinning and wool preparation. Allowing for weight loss on washing, each item might take up three/four unimproved

230 Millett 1990, 181-6. 231 Wild 1968a. 232 I owe this figure to Dr Paul Holder; cf. Garnsey and Sailer 1987, 96 (50,000); pace Millett 1990, 185. 233 von Petrikovits 1976, 598-611; Wild 1979a, 127. 234 Esmonde Cleary 1996, 408 (spindle whorls in quantity at South Shields). The praetorium at Vindolanda seems to have

been buying wool for domestic weaving: Bowman and Thomas 1994, 159-61 no. 192, 1. 4. 235 Tacitus, Ann. 1.17.6; Fink 1971, no. 68 (P.Gen.Lat.1); Cotton and Geiger 1989, 35-56 no. 722. 236 Fink 1971, no. 63 (Hunt's pridianum); pace Whittaker 1994, 106, 110. 237 Wild 1979a, 127; Wipszycka 1966, 4; Sheridan 1998, 81-105. 238 Cuvigny 1996, 140. 239 Cato, de agri cultura 59. 240 PSI VI, 599 (third century B.C.); van Minnen 1986. 241 N0rgaard and Ostergaard 1994. 242 BGU 1564; cf. Wild 1994b, 30-1.



32 J.P. WILD

sheeps' fleeces (Martial quotes playfully five greasy fleeces for a palliolum (Ep. 11.27)), some 200,000 fleeces from the provincial flock.243

There has been much debate about how far strictly local sources could provision the Roman frontier garrisons; the logistics and cost of transport alone would suggest that local sources were tapped first.244 If the figures proposed above are of the right order of magnitude, then on Millett's reckoning of the number of rural sites in the province, perhaps half of the households of Britain contributed to the army's annual textile requirements.245 The army set high standards, as both their pottery and the surviving textiles demonstrate.246 Under pressure the population of the military zone alone might have coped.

EPILOGUE

The technical competence and high standards of textile producers in Roman Britain are now amply attested; that their work was registered in the Edict of Diocletian is no surprise. New and improved tools (iron woolcombs, the two-beam loom) and a more sophisticated economic structure can be credited to Rome's direct influence, together with the purchasing power to acquire a wide range of imported textiles. Yet if the Roman army had never crossed the Channel, remarkably little might have been different. The Romano-British textile industry has much more in common with that of the later pre-Roman Iron Age and of Migration-period Britain than it has with that of the Roman provinces of Syria or Egypt which were already technically far advanced under Hellenistic rule. In textile technology Rome facilitated existing regional development, but had little lasting influence over its direction.

University of Manchester mfassjpw @fs 1.go.man.ac.uk

This paper is published with the aid of a grant from the Councilfor British Archaeology

ABBREVIATIONS

BGU: Viereck, P., and Zucker, F. 1926: Papyri, Ostraka und Wachstafeln aus Philadelphia im Fayam, Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Griechische Urkunden 7, Berlin

CIL: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Dig.: Mommsen,T., Krueger, P., and Watson, A. 1985: The Digest of Justinian, Pennsylvania Edictum Diocletiani: Lauffer, S. 1971: Diokletians Preisedikt, Berlin Edictum Diocletiani: Giacchero, M. 1974: Edictum Diocletiani et Collegarum de pretiis rerum venalium,

Genova PSI: Vitelli, G., and Norsa, M. 1920: Papiri greci e latini VI, Firenze RIB: Collingwood, R.G., Wright, R.P., and Frere, S.S. 1995: The Roman Inscriptions of Britain I (rev. edn),

Stroud VCH Essex: The Victoria History of the County of Essex III, London, 1963 VCH Hants: The Victoria History of the County of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight I, London, 1900

243 Wild 1982a, 110. 244 Breeze 1989, 228; Kreuz 1994/5, 76-83; contra: Bloemers 1989, 189. 245 Millett 1990, 184. 246 Dannell and Wild 1987, 62-5; Dore and Greene 1977, 68-70, 126-7; Greene 1979.




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