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Textiles, Trade and Theories. How scholars past and present view and understandtextile trade the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean in antiquity

Nosch, Marie Louise Bech; Dross-Krüpe, Kerstin

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Publication date:2016

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Citation for published version (APA):Nosch, M. L. B., & Dross-Krüpe, K. (2016). Textiles, Trade and Theories. How scholars past and present viewand understand textile trade the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean in antiquity. In Textiles. Trade andTheories, from the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean (pp. 293-329). Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, Münster.Karum – Emporion – Forum. Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des östlichenMittelmeerraums und Altvorderasiens, Vol.. 2

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Textiles, Trade and Theories

From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean

Edited by Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Marie-Louise Nosch

Kārum – Emporion – Forum Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des östlichen Mittelmeerraums und Altvorderasiens Band 2 Herausgegeben von Angelika Lohwasser, Hans Neumann und Kai Ruffing

Textiles, Trade and Theories

From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean


2016 Ugarit-Verlag

Münster

Textiles, Trade and Theories: From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean


Kārum – Emporion – Forum 2

© 2016 Ugarit-Verlag, Münster www.ugarit-verlag.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in Germany

ISBN: 978-3- 86835-224-5 Printed on acid-free paper

Conference participants Textile Trade and Distribution in Antiquity 2 – Kassel, 11–14 November 2015

(photo R. Frei)

Maps

Table of Contents

Maps ................................................................................................................ IX

Kerstin Dross-Krüpe & Marie-Louise NoschPreface and Acknowledgements ....................................................................... XV

Evelyn KornCloth for Wheat or Cloth for Cloth?Ricardo and Krugman on Ancient International Trade .................................... 1

Agnès Garcia-VenturaDescriptions of Textile Trade and Distribution in Handbooks of Ancient Near Eastern History: A View from Gender Studies ....................... 15

Wim BroekaertThe Empire’s New Clothes: The Roman Textile Industry in an Imperial Framework ................................................................................ 29

Miko FlohrThe Wool Economy of Roman Italy ................................................................. 49

Laetitia Graslin-ThoméImported Textiles and Dyes in First-Millennium BCE Babylonia and the Emergence of New Consumption Needs ............................................. 63

Sebastian FinkWar or Wool? Means of Ensuring Resource-Supplyin 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia ...................................................................... 79

Salvatore GaspaTrade and Distribution of Textiles in Ancient Assyria ...................................... 93

Stella SpantidakiTextile Trade in Classical Athens: From Fibre to Fabric ................................... 125

Monika FrassDie Welt der „Mode“ bei Aristophanes: Kleidung im soziologischen und sozioökonomischen Kontext ......................... 139

Brendan BurkePhrygian Fibulae as Markers of Textile Dedication in Greek Sanctuaries ........ 159

Table of ContentsVIII

Elisabetta LupiMilesische Wolle in Sybaris: Neudeutung eines Fragments von Timaios (FGrH 566 F 50) und die Frage nach dem Textilhandel zwischen Kleinasien und Süditalien) ................................................................ 169

Maria PapadopoulouWool and the City: Wool and Linen Textile Trade in Hellenistic Egypt .......... 193

Eivind Heldaas SelandHere, There and Everywhere: A Network Approach to Textile Trade in the Periplus Maris Erythraei .......................................................................... 211

Herbert GrasslZur Struktur des Textilhandels im Römischen Reich ...................................... 221

Orit ShamirTextile Trade to Palestine in the Roman Period According to the Talmudic Sources and the Textile Finds ............................... 231

Peter Herz Das Preisedikt Diokletians als Quelle des Textilhandels .................................. 247

Ines BogenspergerHow to Order a Textile in Ancient Times: The Step before Distribution and Trade ........................................................... 259

Sabrina TatzDie Textilfunde von Deir el-Bachît (Pauloskloster), Theben-West:Ein Beispiel monastischer Textilproduktion in der Spätantike ......................... 271

Kerstin Dross-Krüpe & Marie-Louise NoschTextiles, Trade and Theories: How Scholars Past and Present View and Understand Textile Trade in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean in Antiquity ................................................................ 293

List of Contributors ......................................................................................... 331

Index of Sources ............................................................................................... 335

Textiles, Trade and TheoriesHow Scholars Past and Present View and Understand Textile Trade

in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean in Antiquity*

Kerstin Droß-Krüpe & Marie-Louise Nosch

This paper argues that textiles as traded commodities are excellent, relevant and representative examples for reviewing the evidence on ancient economies and trade, particularly for reviewing the ways in which historians, philologists, Assyriologists and archaeologists have interpreted textile trade in antiquity.1

Plato, whose reflections on economics have often been overlooked and have only recently been given the attention they deserve,2 listed clothing as the third most important requirement of his ideal (and utopian) conception of the polis – one of the many, but dispersed, hints in the ancient sources of both the symbolic and com-mercial role and value of textile products.

“Now the first and chief of our needs is the provision of food for existence and life.” “Assuredly.” “The second is housing and the third is clothing and that sort of thing.” “That is so.” “Tell me, then,” said I, “how our city will suffice for the provision of all these things (…)?3

Nevertheless, textile trade in antiquity seems to be a case of archéologie du disparu, the archaeology of lost material culture;4 not only have most ancient textiles per-ished, but in many cases, the material remains of prices, orders, sales and repairs are also lost, as most (literary) sources take little interest in them. Moreover, few

* This paper benefitted immensely from the critical readings and stimulating suggestions from Mary Harlow as well as Peder Flemestad, Salvatore Gaspa, Berit Hildebrandt, Florian Krüpe, Kai Ruffing, Stella Spantidaki, Beate Wagner-Hasel, and John Peter Wild. We owe thanks to Virginia Geisel, Mary Harlow, Cherine Munkholt, and Jonathan Wiener for their help with the clarity of language and thoughts.

1 Cf. Droß-Krüpe 2016. In the last five years, textile exchange, trade and distribution in the Mediterranean and along the Silk Road regions have been explored in conferences Harvard (20–21 April 2012): Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity: The Silk Trade (organized by Berit Hildebrandt); Marburg (9–10 April 2013): Textile Trade and Distribution in Antiquity (organized by Kerstin Droß-Krüpe); Hangzhou (8–11 April 2013): Wool on the Silk Road: Research on the Eurasian Wool Textiles of Bronze to Early Iron Age (organized by Ulla Mannering and Zhao Feng); Kassel (11–14 November 2015): Textile Trade and Distribution 2. From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean 1000 BC to 400 AD (organized by Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Marie-Louise Nosch); Hannover (9–10 June 2016): Waren und Tribute. Stoffkreisläufe und antike Textilökonomie (organized by Beate Wagner-Hasel and Marie-Louise Nosch), and the results published or are about to appear, see Droß-Krüpe 2013; Hildebrandt 2016; Mannering & Zhao (forthcoming).

2 Föllinger 2016.3 Pl. Resp. 369d: ἀλλὰ μὴν πρώτη γε καὶ μεγίστη τῶν χρειῶν ἡ τῆς τροφῆς παρασκευὴ

τοῦ εἶναί τε καὶ ζῆν ἕνεκα. παντάπασί γε. δευτέρα δὴ οἰκήσεως, τρίτη δὲ ἐσθῆτος καὶ τῶν τοιούτων. ἔστι ταῦτα. φέρε δή, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, πῶς ἡ πόλις ἀρκέσει ἐπὶ τοσαύτην παρασκευήν. Translation by Paul Shorey with small alterations by the authors.

4 Spantidaki in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 125–138.

Kerstin Droß-Krüpe & Marie-Louise Nosch294

installations of textile trading places, such as markets, ports, workshops, and few textile trading artefacts such as textile tools or price tags remain.5 Intangible evi-dence for textile trade includes names for garments and techniques, a terminology, which maintains a remarkable resilience over time but also identifies a potential wealth of innovations.6 These observations are not only true for Classical Greece and Rome but apply to many other regions and periods of the ancient world. Our perspective is significantly broadened, however, by including documentary evidence, in particular papyri from Egypt (and some other places), cuneiform texts or the epi-graphic record.7 For example, traders specialising in selling linen are mentioned both in Attic comedy and in inscriptions,8 professional garment-sellers are mentioned in the Greek epigraphic record;9 the Periplus Maris Erythraei, dating to the mid-1st century CE, illustrates the importance of textiles as trading goods from the Roman Empire all the way to the East (meaning the Arabian peninsula and India) and back again.10 One might also think of the tax law from Palmyra dating to 137 CE, which provides evidence for the export and import of textile raw materials, for example, purple fleeces, as well as the profession of garment traders.11 Diocletian’s Price Edict is a unique source for garments, textile tools, fibres and salaries for textile workers, and numerous Latin inscriptions record freedmen (and -women) earning their living in trading professions connected to textiles.12 All this encourages a more systematic exploration of textiles as trade items. The present paper has a specific aim: to explore in greater depth the theoretical frameworks of textile trade and distribution, and to integrate data from the Greek and Roman worlds with pertinent sources in the ancient Near East, primarily from the first millennium BCE.

Textiles, Trade and Theories in Ancient HistoryIn recent years, research in ancient history has increasingly focused on the economy of the ancient world,13 and consequently, research on the ancient economy seems to be experiencing remarkable progress. Possibly, this is at least partially a response to the current global economic and financial crisis, and the need to understand these rather complex and increasingly difficult processes by investigating equivalent his-torical phenomena.

Ancient economic history can look back on a long and significant tradition. However, before the late 20st century, only few, but important, substantial contri-

5 On possible price tags see Graßl 2014. 6 Michel & Nosch 2010; Gaspa, Michel & Nosch (forthcoming). 7 See, e.g. Droß-Krüpe 2011. 8 Ar. Hipp. 129; IG 22/1570, 24; IG 22/1572, 8. 9 IG 22/11254; IG 2²/1673 (recording three entries for a total of 28 exomides purchased for

public slaves from various clothes-sellers [himatiopolai]). 10 The main edition is Casson 1989. Cf. Seland 2010; Droß-Krüpe 2013, 150; Wild & Wild

2014.11 TUAT NF 1, 280–292.12 E.g. CIL 6/33906 (= ILS 758); CIL 6/3782; AE 1929, 23. See also Larsson Lovén 2013.13 For example the following publications of the 21st century: Wagner-Hasel 2000; Scheidel

& v. Reden 2002; Rollinger & Ulf 2004; Eich 2006; Kloft 2006; Manning & Morris 2007; Bowman & Wilson 2007; Oliver 2007; Moreno 2007; Tomber 2008; Migeotte 2009; Herz et al. 2011; Carla & Marcone 2011; Temin 2012; Terpstra 2013.

Textiles, Trade and Theories 295

butions had been made to the discussion: it was particularly the ‘Bücher-Meyer-controversy’ at the turn of the 20th century – rightly considered as the debate of the century in ancient economic history.14 As this is certainly not the right place to resume this debate in toto, some brief (and abridging) remarks ought to suffice: this debate over the basic features of the economy in Classical Antiquity arose with Karl Bücher’s claim that the ancient economy never overcame the stage of a ‘closed household economy’.15 This stance stimulated immediately rigorous rejections from the elite scholars of ancient history. Eduard Meyer, in particular, (along with Karl Julius Beloch and others) dismissed Bücher’s statement as being an unscientific and ill-founded description of the ancient economy. He assumed instead that some pe-riods in ancient history were rather economically comparable with early modern capitalism.16 Another work that has ranked as an basic reference (at least well into the 1990s) was The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World published 1941 by the Russian ancient historian Michail Ivanovič Rostovtzeff, representing a decidedly modernistic view towards the Hellenistic world. Rostovtzeff graded the key sectors of the ancient economy according to their importance as agriculture, forestry, mining, and fishing. Yet, neither trade nor textiles, however, were given any prominent role, although the latter are named as important products – but only for certain regions, these being Egypt, Phoenicia, Cyprus and the Greek poleis on the Ionian coast.17 To Rostovtzeff, textiles are rarely traded and almost exclusively produced within the individual household for personal requirements only.18 In his opinion, trade in all manufactured goods – perhaps with the exception of luxury items – was barely developed. Since Rostovtzeff believed that textiles were a result of subsistence and household production only, they were never looked upon as trading articles, and their potential role as traded commodities was neglected.19

The ‘primitivist’ approaches have been given another boost by the alleged ‘new orthodoxy’20 of neo-primitivistic positions as expressed by the Cambridge school, primarily by Moses I. Finley and his predecessor of the chair of Ancient History at Cambridge, A. H. M. Jones.21 Very briefly outlined, Finley argues, that the ancient (meaning more or less Greek) economy can by no means be conceived in modern terms. He believed the ancient economy to have been primitive, based largely on agrarian production, characterised by localised small-scale manufacturing and very little technical innovations. According to him, only very limited surpluses existed

14 For a good summary of the ‘Bücher-Meyer-controversy’ see Schneider 2009, 347–381, as well as Wagner-Hasel 2009 and 2011, 280–289 and Lupi in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 169–191.

15 Bücher 1893.16 Meyer 1895; Beloch 1899; Hoffmeister 1899; Meyer 1910, esp. 113 and 144. Bücher respon-

ded 1901. Cf. Wagner-Hasel 2015.17 Rostovzteff 1941, 1222–1223. 18 Rostovzteff 1941, 1227. His view on the Roman world is very similar (Rostovtzeff 1926).19 However, as John Peter Wild pointed out to us, Rostovtzeff (1938) published the amazing

textiles of Dura-Europos, and was well aware of the advanced techniques value of textiles.20 Cf. Hopkins 1983, xi. 21 Finley 1973 and 1977 – one may note that both his major works barely mention textiles. An

overview of the research history can be found in Bresson 2007, 7–26, Ruffing 2008, 1–16, Flohr & Wilson 2016, and Ruffing 2016. For a discussion on the history of ideas, especially in the context of Greek economy, see also Eich 2006, 7–98.


and hardly any trade was conducted (and if so, it was limited to luxury goods only). Although his highly influential study was only published 1973, when he was in Cambridge, a number of his ideas seem to have been developed much earlier under the influence of Polanyi and Jones.22 It is important to note, however, that Finley’s position in particular, in spite of its undeniable impact, was questioned from the start, leading to divergent views on the ancient economy. A core question was the nature of the ancient city: a consumer city as assumed by the Cambridge scholars, following Max Weber’s description of the Konsumentenstadt, or a producer city as as-sumed by those of more modernist views.23

Few historians and archaeologists of the previous generation who analysed an-cient trade rarely, if ever, included textiles and garments in their analyses and inter-pretation of the ancient world.24 Alain Bresson, in his two-volume L’ économie de la Grèce des cités (fin VIe–Ier siècle a. C.) is one of the few ancient historians to include textiles in his comprehensive analyses of ancient economy and trade.25 He did not dedicate a large part of his analysis to textiles, but emphasized the significance and importance of textiles in the ancient economy. Bresson sees here “a genuine mass production”26 and speaks of “textiles, the sector that employed the most labour and which must have produced by far the most profit.”27 To the question of the consumer city or the producer city, Bresson answered with his 2000 work, La cité marchande.

Taken as a whole, research on ancient economic history at the turn of the 20th and 21st century showed the need for new methodological approaches. Recent dis-ecent dis-cussions on the ancient economy and trade have also emphasized the psychological and emotional aspects of transactions, for example, the roles of trust and confidence as being the driving forces and consolidators of trade, whereas distrust and corrup-tion would slow down or disrupt trade and commercial interaction. The institu-tional measures to ensure trust and confidence are well addressed in the theories united under the captivating concept, New Institutional Economics (NIE). In New Institutional Economics, institutions are perceived as relevant structures intended to reduce risks and instability.28

22 Flohr & Wilson 2016, 34–35. The works of Tenney Frank (1910; 1918; 1927) and later Arnold Hugh Martin Jones (1940; 1960; 1964) acquired significant impact in to Anglophone academic world – and beyond – during the first two thirds of the 20th century. The latter, stressing that an ancient city was “economically parasitic on the countryside” (Jones, 1940, 268), also dealt with what he called the Roman ‘cloth industry’ (Jones 1960, see also Larson Lovén 2013, 110–111). For Polanyi’s discussion of economic models in antiquity, see 1957 and 1968.

23 Weber 1921; see also pertinent discussion in Hansen 2000, especially 156–160.24 Garnsey & Whittaker 1983; Garnsey, Hopkins & Whittaker 1983; Andreau, Briant &

Descat 1994; Osborne 1996; Parkins 1998; Whitby 1998; Prag, Snodgrass & Tsetskhladze 2000. These works all deal with ancient economy and trade but have none or only rare men-tions of textiles.

25 Bresson 2007, 150–160; the French work was translated and updated in the English edition, Bresson 2016, 190–194, 353–358, 360–364. See also Nosch 2014.

26 Bresson 2016, 192.27 Bresson 2016, 193–194.28 North 1981, 5; North 1990.


Textiles, Trade and Theories of New Institutional EconomicsIn 1977, Douglass North had suggested a historical analysis of past and contempo-rary economics based on transaction cost theory,29 a cornerstone of New Institutional Economics.30 Although North himself had published a series of important essays and a fundamental monograph on the use of New Institutional Economics in historical societies,31 this new approach was introduced into ancient history only hesitantly.32 In this respect, Morris Silver, a New York-based economist, played a pioneering role in the 1990s. He had analysed the ancient economy of the Classical world and the ancient Near East from a New Institutional Economics’ perspective,33 and in his Economic Structures of Antiquity, Silver, as North before him, emphasized transaction cost theory. He also included textiles as a key product in his analysis, defining, for example, the textile exports documented in Ebla texts from the mid-3rd millennium BCE in terms of comparative advantages.34 Prior to Silver, Jean-Jacques Aubert had focused on principal – agent relationships – also a cornerstone of New Institutional Economics. His study, Business Managers in Ancient Rome, was published in 1994.35

However, it was not until the first decade of the 21st century that New Institutional Economics experienced a breakthrough in ancient economic history research. In 2005, Elio Lo Cascio, who must also be seen as a pioneer in this field, pub-lished a radical request for the application of New Institutional Economics to the Roman economy.36 Dennis P. Kehoe used the same approach of New Institutional Economics in a 2007-study on the reciprocal relationship between Roman legisla-tion and agriculture.37 In the same year, Bresson published his fundamental study on the economic history of the Greek poleis, which also applied New Institutional Economics theories and included textile production as well as trade in raw textile fi-bre material.38 The breakthrough of this new approach was completed with the pub-lication of The Cambridge Economic History of Greece and Rome edited by Ian Morris, Richard Saller and Walter Scheidel, also in 2007, the theoretical background of which mostly originates from New Institutional Economics39 – but where again, tex-tiles are treated randomly and only appear scattered in a few chapters.40 Broekaert’s paper in the present volume, The Empire’s New Clothes. The Roman Textile Industry in an Imperial Framework, is an apology for a comprehensive NIE analysis of the Roman economy and of the textile industry’s role and performance in it. Broekaert poses a crucial question: with the integration of large parts of southern and central

29 North 1977.30 Cf. Silver 1995, xxi. 31 Cf. especially North 1992 and 1996.32 An example of a critical assessment of New Institutional Economics is Maucourant 2012.33 Cf. Silver 1983; 1995.34 Silver 1995, 143. See below for a discussion of comparative advantage in antiquity.35 Cf. Aubert 1994, 40–116.36 Cf. Lo Cascio 2005 and 2006; see also Lerouxel 2006.37 Cf. Kehoe 2007, especially 29–52. 38 Cf. Bresson 2007, 23–36; for his opinion on the impact of textile trade see also Bresson

2012; Bresson 2016, 190–194, 353–357, 361–364.39 Cf. Morris et al. 2007.40 That this observation is not only true for this most recent companion on the Greco-Roman

economy but also for handbooks of the ancient Near East is demonstrated by Garcia-Ventura in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 15–27.


Europe and the Near East into the Roman Empire, how did the Roman textile in-dustry respond to this new economic framework? How did the institutions respond? The present volume provides several answers, and does not limit itself to the Roman textile industry, but also explores the impact of political and military expansion on textile manufacture and trade in other parts of the ancient world.

Generally, the New Institutional Economics approach is, in our view, pro-ductive and succeeds in extracting and highlighting new aspects of economic ac-tions in the past. Yet, textile production and distribution do not act, or perform in New Institutional Economics terminology, in the same way as most other economic sectors. It has its own particular requirements, modes of communication, customer fidelity, fashions and traditions, and we cannot be certain that frameworks from agriculture, metal extraction and trade are always applicable to textiles. For textile production, transaction costs, and in particular transportation costs, play their own specific roles. Indeed, for the medieval period, which did not see major improve-ments in inter-regional infrastructure compared to, for example, the Roman Empire, the French historian Jacques Le Goff calculated that transportation costs were much lower for textiles than for any other of the major categories of goods: in medieval trade, he calculated 15% transportation costs for the prices of grain but only 2% transportation costs for wool and silk prices.41

Comparing Histories and Quantifying the EconomyCurrently, New Institutional Economics is not by any means the only the only new methodological and theoretical approach used in the analysis of ancient economies. In 2008, in The Roman Bazaar, Peter Fibiger Bang ventured to describe the econom-ics of the Roman Empire with reference to the Indian Mogul Empire (1526–1857) by using the comparative approach of ‘cross-over history’.42 A comparative approach had already been taken by Henri W. Pleket in 1990, where he chose the economy of Early Modern Europe as a referential base for his economy of the Roman Empire.43 In the realm of textiles, Rosa Reuthner embarked on a similar path in her study of women and textile production in Greek households, compared to household econo-mies of Early Modern Europe and manuals of how to run an efficient and proper domestic economy.44 The universal theme of textiles is, indeed, highly germane to comparative studies for several reasons: textile technology and productivity remains quite stable from the Bronze Age to the early medieval period, and textiles, in par-ticular those made of silk or cotton, are commodities we know linked Asia and the Mediterranean from ancient up to early modern times.45

41 Le Goff 1972, 17; Bresson 2016, 84.42 Bang 2008 and 2009.43 Cf. Pleket 1990 and previous studies of 1984 and 1988. On the subject of textile distributi-

on, one of his later essays deserves particular attention: Pleket 1998. Among the more recent works taking this comparative approach see Whittow 2013.

44 Reuthner 2006.45 This was illustrated in the volumes edited by Nosch, Zhao & Varadarajan 2014 and

Hildebrandt 2016. See also Crill 2006, Curtin 2008 or Hildebrandt 2012 (on silk trade); trade in cotton and silk is also addressed in Shamir in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 231–245.


Another approach deserving particular attention is provided by the anthology Quantifying the Roman Economy edited by Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson in 2009, whose contributions are devoted to quantifying Roman archaeological and documentary source material.46 This leads to the crucial question of whether we can quantify textile trade in antiquity.47 For the Roman world, Miko Flohr raises an important caveat in his paper, ‘Evidence, Models, and the Wool Economy of Roman Italy’, and assumes that it would only be possible to quantify the textile consumption aspect of the Roman economy, but not its production side.

Moreover, Emanuel Mayer has recently proposed the concept of a taberna econ-omy in the Roman Empire, serving as a foundation for the development of the financially potent, culturally distinct middle class in contrast to the imperial upper class.48 Likewise, another recent take is the focus on growth in ancient economy and trade, both in the Greco-Roman world and in the ancient Near East.49 However, in these works, economic growth is not analysed in terms of increased textile consump-tion and production, or accelerated or differentiated textile trade, since most scholars seem to consider textile consumption – if it is considered at all – as a staple basic need, like subsistence food consumption, which is primarily impacted by population growth, and only marginally by economic growth and wealth. Thus, quantifications, taberna economies, and growth are significant new approaches, but it remains to be seen how they can be used to explore and integrate textile trade and distribution.

Social network theory is increasingly popular, although economic aspects often take second place to social connections. Particular highlights in this context are Giovanni R. Ruffini’s Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt, 2008 and Irad Malkin’s A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean, from 2011.50 Eivind H. Seland has applied network analysis to the datasets of clothing and ports of trade in the Periplus Maris Erythraei. He demonstrates that the Egyptian ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike, as well as Barygaza in India, stand out as extraordinary cen-tres of textile trade, and concludes that textiles are indeed the backbone of Indian Ocean trade. Regarding the extremely valuable commodity silk, it is interesting to note that some Indian ports both import and export silk, thus suggesting local silk production living comfortably alongside silk trade. Seland infers that:

textiles move in all directions, so that some ports import certain types and export others. This is not prestige trade or gift exchange, but an integrated market system with producers and traders catering to local demand (…).51

46 Cf. Bowman & Wilson 2007. 47 See e.g. van Minnen 1986; Drinkwater 2001; Droß-Krüpe 2011, 78–86; Broekaert 2014.48 Cf. Mayer 2012. 49 Morris 2004, 709–742; Bresson 2016; Ober 2010, 241–286; Jursa 2010.50 None of the latter works of scholarship mentioned include textile products in their analysis.

However, see Seland 2016. Broekaert 2011 and 2013 as well as Flohr in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 49–62 who assign a key role to social networks, though not taking a Social Network Analysis-approach.

51 Seland in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 211–219.


Changes in Trade PatternsIn this paper, we gather evidence of textile trade over three millennia and it is thus crucial to outline the large-scale systems and changes over this long time span. The political entities, such as Classical Greece, Hellenistic Egypt, the Roman world, first come to mind as scaffolds for our reflection, as do geographical and environmental realities and chronology. It is important to reflect upon what larger factors govern textile trade beyond the local needs and regional networks. Salvatore Gaspa posi-tions textile trade in a historical and chronological context. His interpretive model demonstrates that we need to understand textile trade in the first millennium BCE as fundamentally different from that of the second millennium BCE.52 These two millennia had two quite different systems and strategies for producing and trading textiles, each with its own methods and aims for textile trade, and it is only by in-terpreting textile trade between these major socio-economic systems in the ancient Near East that we are able to understand and appreciate it fully. A collapse occurred at the end of the Bronze Age with radical changes and crises, especially in the region of the eastern Mediterranean, from the Euphrates to Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and the Aegean area, the Bronze Age palace and temple systems were destroyed and with them collapsed the Bronze Age economic systems. In the second millennium economies, textiles were produced and consumed in palaces and re-distributed to remunerate officials and workers within the palace and temple systems.53 In parallel to these closely monitored systems of textile production, distribution and consump-tion, there were also other exchange systems between individual persons, house-holds or workshops, based on demands for cloth and the availability of labour and raw materials.54 The new systems of trade networks emerging in the 1st millennium BCE were based on different socio-economic systems, new policies, a new economic geography, but also on innovations, such as improved ship technology and camel caravans, enabling much longer journeys. In the East, this expanded the potential trade networks to comparably more distant areas, which were previously inacces-sible, such as the arid regions of the Arabian Peninsula and the Iranian Plateau. In the 1st millennium BCE, the Iron Age political and economic systems of Anatolia, Syria, Palestine and Aegean area were ruled by city-states and ethnic kingdoms. The new trade network of the 1st millennium not only served the old palace and temple sites but connected new nodes such as harbours and caravan cities, attracting the political and commercial interest of large polities towards these rich international trade centres.55 In the Aegean, in Brendan Burke’s analysis, the 1st-millennium BCE sanctuaries took over the roles which the Mycenaean palaces had previously played, also in terms of the economy, trade, production and distribution.

Ritual activities were a driving force of certain parts of the ancient economy, and traders could perhaps gain markets around major sanctuaries. The production, trade and circulation of dedicated valuables in a sanctuary context is difficult to quantify, due to the scarcity of sources, and large parts of dedications, such as ani-

52 Breniquet & Michel 2014.53 Nosch 2008.54 Veenhof 1972; Michel 2001; Michel & Veenhof 2010; Michel 2014. Private letters written

on papyrus provide information about the transfer of goods across the entire province of Egypt, including textiles. Cf. Droß-Krüpe 2014; Reinard (forthcoming).

55 See Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123 with further references.


mals, wine or food, were consumed immediately, or used for a short time. Other goods, such as textiles, were stored in the sanctuary and registered, sometimes even annually, as is attested at the sanctuary of Artemis in Brauron on the eastern coast of Attica.56 Burke suggests that the numerous Phrygian bronze fibulae and belts found in early Greek sanctuaries could be interpreted as proxies for the dedications of the renowned Phrygian textiles. “The fibulae are a portable concentration of metallic wealth in an age before coinage”, he claims,57 and this highlights the relationship between textiles, value and the economy.

An Integrated Approach to Textile Trade in the Ancient WorldIn the light of research history, it is notable that not only does a wide repertoire of theories and approaches exist, but also that a sharp demarcation persists in our un-derstanding of the economies of the Greco-Roman world, and ancient Near Eastern cultures, respectively.58 Despite textiles being traded across the entire Mediterranean, to the northern Roman provinces, to India and China and back, as scholars, we still tend to interpret them within some preconceived models of economic systems, which are based on history and geography, and confined to the Ancient Near East, to Greece, to Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and to the Roman Empire. These mod-els can admittedly be helpful scaffolds for research; they do, however, rest upon dif-ferent academic traditions and upon very different bodies of evidence in the source material.

The perception of entirely different types of economies is rooted in the idea of qualifying pre-modern economies as “embedded”,59 which means that political and sociological structures are prerequisites for any economy, and that homo oeconomicus takes second place to homo politicus. This distinction is based on the assumption of a sharp contrast between the ancient Greco-Roman economies being character-ized by the oikos and private property, and the ancient Near Eastern economies by large institutional units (i.e. palaces and temples) rather than by private property.60 Notably, Michael Jursa justifiably took an unequivocal stance against the assump-tion of total otherness regarding ancient Near Eastern economies, in particular that of the Babylonians.61

Against this divided background, it should constitute a specific goal to include the experts in, and pertinent discussions of, ancient economies and trade patterns in these different regions, in order to overcome the previous, rather Eurocentric, focus on the Mediterranean region.62 We strongly believe that bridging east and west is particularly germane when exploring textile trade.

56 Cleland 2005a and 2005b; Brøns 2016; Brøns & Nosch (forthcoming).57 Burke 2016, 166.58 In regard to the so-called Asian despotism, cf. Reich 2004, 493–510. 59 Polanyi 1968.60 Cf. Morris et al. 2007, 8; Bedford 2005, 59–70. See also Papadopolou in this volume (=

Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 193–209 for the idea of a predominantly state-driven econo-my in Ptolemaic Egypt.

61 Cf. Jursa 2007 and 2008 as well as Jursa 2010, esp. 783–800. 62 See Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123; Graslin-Thomé in this

volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 63–77; Fink in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 79–92; Shamir in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 231–245.


Common to the ancient Near East and to the Greek and Roman world is the tendency of many scholars to view trade patterns in terms of a centre and periph-ery model. It can certainly be a very useful model to explain and justify the mo-dalities of trade. However, it has the methodological bias that most textual sources come from centres (and perhaps the presence of texts in fact transforms a site into a ‘centre’ in the course of scholarly analysis). Centre versus periphery models can be seen in Mycenaean palace economies and bureaucracies, in works on Assyrian and Babylonian trade and economy, in the analyses of Athens versus Attica or other parts of the Aegean, and in the analysis of Roman textile trade and production.63

However, here we aim to challenge these models, and to overcome these series of conventional antitheses of primitivism versus modernism, Classical Antiquity versus the Ancient Near East, centre versus periphery, oikos versus palace, household pro-duction versus (proto-)industry. We are fully aware that fully overcoming or ignoring these categories is beyond our powers, as we all tend to think in these frames and as these categories are indeed useful, as mentioned above. In our opinion, it is neverthe-less important to scrutinize them and to be cognizant of how they determined – and still determine – how we as scholars perceive and interpret ancient sources. To be able to understand current research as well as to explore new research paths, we con-sider it crucial to adopt an integrated perspective. Nevertheless, regional differences certainly do exist in ancient textile trade, which we wish to briefly outline here, as they are addressed in this volume.

Regional and Chronological Frameworks in Ancient Textile Trade. Balancing Models Based on Households, Private Enterprises and State Control

Assyria is also an excellent example of how empires (and also smaller economic and political entities) decide to direct large-scale investments towards infrastructures which facilitated trade in textiles. In Neo-Assyrian sources, the textual documenta-tion focuses almost entirely on textile trade stemming from, or catering to, consump-tion in palaces and other government-related sectors. Yet, private trade certainly also existed and flourished in the Assyrian Empire, although it is scarcely attested in the extant sources. A few examples demonstrate that the royal officials and state-com-missioned tamkārus not only acted as crown agents in domestic and foreign trading activities, but also conducted private business on the side. One might conclude with Salvatore Gaspa that the Assyrian crown’s main policy was not to monopolize the trade of textiles, and that private trade may have represented a substantial part of the Assyrian economy and was permitted – even encouraged – as long as it did not

63 Nosch 2003; Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123; Graslin-Thomé in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 63–77; Bresson 2016, 348–349; Jongmann 2000; Leveau 2007.


e vade state taxation and control.64 Laetitia Graslin-Thomé, instead, construes private enterprise in Assyria as having been much more limited in volume and scope.65

Documents concerning textile trade in 1st millennium Assyria primarily con-cern imported textiles, and neither exports nor internal circulation. A powerful and dominating empire, like that of the Assyrians, had the privilege of choosing between taking political or military control over an area where desired trade goods could be obtained, or taking control over the area’s trade stations and harbours where the de-sired goods could be levied. Control of the trading posts also enabled the Assyrians to exclude competitors, such as Egypt, from lucrative markets. A third option, how-ever, is to relax the political and military control and instead install efficient taxa-tion systems on trade, upheld by palace tax agents or given out in commission to agents. Gaspa demonstrates that the Assyrians allowed wealthy cities in Phoenicia and Babylonia a high degree of independence in order not to interrupt profitable trade activities. Instead, the Assyrians installed a strict system of taxes in Phoenician ports of trade and forbade trade in certain wares with competitors in the area.66

The traditional view of textile trade in both Classical and Hellenistic Greece and in Rome is strongly focused on small, private enterprises and local, domestic textile production.67 This focus on the private nature of textile trade in Classical an-tiquity owes much to the ‘Bücher-Meyer-controvercy’ at the turn of the 20th century about how to understand the ancient economy and the significant impact of Finley on the interpretations of Archaic and Classical Greek economy.68 It is particularly interesting to note a significant gap between normative guidelines in the literary sources – being the evidence traditional historians like Finley focused on – and social realities presented in the documentary sources as well as in the archaeological record. The realm of textiles actually highlights and substantiates a wider array of production modes than anticipated by historians, ranging from household economy to a (proto-)industrial textile production69 including a professionalized textile trade. The challenge is thus to weigh them or to argue against those who wish to prioritize

64 Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 120. The Assyrian textual material provides an illuminating source basis to discuss the agency of textile traders, especially the state organized trade using the tamkārus, ‘merchants’, in order to fulfil the needs of the Neo-Assyrian state machinery. They were members of the palace elite who acted as royal agents and ensured commercial activities on behalf of the state (Radner 1999, 101–103).

65 Graslin-Thomé 2009, 281. Graslin-Thomé in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 63–77 addresses the crucial questions of why a product is imported, and what motivati-on lies behind trade. She uses the rich sources of the Neo-Babylonian archives (626–539 BCE), which represent some 20,000 texts, and the 2,000 or so archival documents of the Persian period (539–350 BCE). She observes that the origin of imported goods is only rarely mentioned.

66 Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123.67 E.g. Reuthner 2006. Beginning with the Homeric epics, literary sources stress the role of

women in the procurement of textiles and cloth for their families (e.g. Hom. Il. 3.125; 6.294–295; Od. 2.104–106). This private (textile) trade was based on dense social net-works of family, friends and acquaintances, but could also involve slaves and freedmen, see Verboven 2002; Broekaert 2012 & 2013; Ruffing 2013; Droß-Krüpe 2014.

68 Finley 1973. See discussion above, notes 14–23.69 One may think of the so-called “house of loom weights” (A viii 7) in Olynthus or a series

of industrial complexes on the Rachni at Isthmia; see Droß-Krüpe 2016 with further li-


one over another. Indeed, this volume illustrates both extremes, as well as hybrid in-between models that co-existed throughout antiquity. Stella Spantidaki reviews the documentation for Athens, and rather than falling into the old trap of primitive versus modern, she instead explores the use, advantages and disadvantages of both models. A defining element of a Classical Greek polis was the agora, the central mar-ket place and place for gathering and socialising. Here consumers, traders (emporoi), and producers (dēmiourgoi) met and interacted, both the professional traders and those trading the surplus of their own domestic productions. Specialized markets emerged in Athens dealing with textiles, such as the himatiopōlis, the speiropōlis, and the gynaikeia agora. A series of public offices were established by the Greek city states, such as the agoranomoi and the metronomoi, to ensure quality, supervise trade transactions and prevent fraud.70 Domestic textile production is also seen as a potential way out of financial problems for a family in a time of crisis, according to Xenophon, and thus may represent a kind of private buffer economy which could bolster a fragile financial situation.71 Whether rich or poor, textile production re-mains closely associated with female labour. Trading textiles, garments, sheep, raw wool, or dyestuffs were in contrast primarily a male sphere of action, although a few female traders of textile accessories and clothing are encountered in the sources.72 Herbert Graßl observed a fundamental difference between textile production struc-tures in the east and west of the Roman Empire: women are not attested as actors in textile trade in the western part, but do appear in the eastern part of the Roman economy.73 The idealisation of textile-working housewives, specifically for girls and women of the upper classes, seems to be quite constant in Greece and in the Roman world as well.74

As mentioned above, papyri including documentary source material have sig-nificantly broadened our knowledge of ancient textile trade. In the Hellenistic pe-riod, the most prominent source for operations in textile economics derives from large estates in Egypt. In particular, the surviving papers of Zenon of Caunos, man-ager of one of these estates, cast an interesting light on wool textile production in mid-third century BCE Memphis.75 Based on this evidence, Maria Papadopoulou assesses textile production and distribution in Hellenistic Egypt as entangled in a complex hybrid model of institutions involved on several levels, and also regulated and controlled from the top state level in the desire to meet the requirements of the royal household.76 The crucial question she asks concerns the Greek impact on the Ptolemaic organization of the textile economy. Papadopoulou follows Joseph

terature. Meo 2012; 2014; 2015 has documented the rich data on textile manufacture in domestic contexts of Southern Italy, also well beyond domestic needs.

70 Spantidaki in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 125–138, admits, however, to being most convinced and inspired by modernist studies, such as Acton 2014. See also Reuthner 2006, 253–254 and Spantidaki 2016.

71 Xen. Mem. 2.7.72 Ar. Ran. 1347.73 Graßl in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 221–230.74 E.g. the so-called Laudatio Turiae (ILS 8393 & 8394) or Suet. Aug. 64.75 Loftus 2000; Papadopolou in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 193–209.76 Papadopolou in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 193–209; for Roman Egypt see

Droß-Krüpe 2011.


Manning77 as well as economist John Hicks’78 three-fold typology of economies as (i) village or local subsistence economies, (ii) the bureaucratic controlled economy, and (iii) the market economy organized by local communities such as temples and market places.

However, the historical and archaeological realities are mostly less well de-fined than a typology and overlaps must be expected. The late antique monastery in Deir el-Bachît, Egypt, makes this point. Sabrina Tatz presents new archaeologi-cal evidence from the excavations of weaving workshops, and the quite exceptional evidence for loom pits,79 and for an archaeologist, the monastery would exemplify Manning’s type of a local subsistence economy, but written evidence also illustrates the monastery’s wider trade networks and a bureaucratic control of production.

Besides Egypt and Asia Minor, Roman Italy provides one of the largest bodies of textual evidence on textile trade, production and consumption in the Roman world. The population of Italy experienced high growth from the late Republic, and the people of Rome were in constant need of clothing and textiles.80 Moreover, there was a general accumulation of private wealth, and in terms of textile consumption, it is worth noting how the increasing textile production developed alongside a more and more demanding dress culture. Italy was one of the largest sales markets in the Roman Empire, and within Italy, Rome was the main consumer. Miko Flohr, in his paper, ‘Evidence, Models, and the Wool Economy of Roman Italy’, re-examines how to interpret and understand wool trade in Roman Italy.81 Current scholarship has two main models of the Italian textile economy and of Italian – especially Pompeian – wool production. Both Tenney Frank and Walter O. Moeller believed that Pompeii was an outstanding centre of Roman textile production with large-scale manufac-turing that was clearly export-oriented.82 In contrast, Willem Jongman assumes that wool was produced in Northern and Southern Italy, while weaving on a large scale took place in Central Italy. Pompeii, in his view, has instead to be interpreted as the archetype of Weber and Finley’s ‘consumer city’ with a small-scale textile industry, serving the local market only.83 In particular, Jongman’s model of the Italian wool producing economy has gained wide support in studies of ancient history.84 Flohr proposes an alternative model of the wool textile economy and geography of Roman Italy:85 while stressing the impact of improved opportunities for trade and transport as well as a possible increase in the scale of exchange, demand and consumption of textiles in Imperial times, he suggests interpreting the Imperial Roman textile

77 Manning 2011, 73–164.78 Hicks 1969, 6 and 25.79 Tatz in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 271–292.80 See various contributions in Nosch 2011. One may note that the production of textiles for

the imperial army is also attested in the Assyrian Empire as state-driven production of uni-forms for military units documented in the Neo-Assyrian texts.

81 Flohr in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 49–62.82 Frank 1918; Frank 1927, 260–264; Moeller 1976.83 Jongman 1988, 155–186. On the consumer city, see above note 23.84 See also van Minnen 1986; Drinkwater 2001; Droß-Krüpe 2011, 78–86; Broekaert 2014.

However, it may be objected that Jongman’s model seems over-inspired by medieval indust-rial patterns. This point was raised by John Peter Wild during the conference.

85 Flohr 2013, 2014 and in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016).


economy as woven into Italy’s Republican past.86 He advocates a model of the Italian wool economy where, due to the economic integration of the wider Mediterranean area and the development of a rather market-oriented textile economy, raw wool as well as woven textiles were traded. Flohr thus calls for the debate to shift towards analysing the relative proportion of textile trade – however difficult this may prove to be, considering the sources available. His call is answered by Wim Broekaert, who outlines the prospects and limits of an integrated and globalizing Roman textile economy.87

Consequently, given the regional structures of the ancient textile economy and trade outlined above, as well as the theoretical frameworks they are situated in or emerge from, for us the superordinate and crucial questions for developing an in-tegrated approach to this range of topics are: why trade, and in particular, why textile trade?

Why (Textile) Trade?

Trade as a Means to Compensate for a Lack of Resources A general view is that trade is a means to obtain sufficient basic resources for sur-vival.88 Thus, our interpretations of the textile trade tend to be defined by general assumptions about the baseline of ancient economies. An example is the general understanding that the alluvial plain of Mesopotamia lacked sufficient resources, and thus, societies were reliant on trade and imports from areas richer in resources. Such assumptions are based on the principal idea that a lack of fibres would generate their import, and an abundance of fibres would facilitate their export.89 This gen-eral assumption about the absence of resources as a catalyst for trade can be seen in Sebastian Fink’s paper:

Southern Mesopotamia, commonly regarded as the birthplace of urbanization, is characterized by its lack of natural resources. Besides its famous abundance of ag-ricultural products including grain, livestock, fish, and reed, all found in the fertile areas along the river banks, almost every basic ingredient of a highly developed material culture had to be acquired from abroad.90

Evidently, Fink argues that a lack of natural resources would stimulate trade, and that even Mesopotamia’s abundance of agricultural produce was not sufficient. Thus, according to Fink, the trade stimulus does not derive from the competitive advantage of specialization or abundance, but from the desire to acquire foreign, necessary products, especially those of non-local origin, such as metals, glass, and precious fabrics.

86 Flohr in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 50: “the complex Italian textile eco-nomy of the Imperial period seems to have emerged from modest and familiar Republican period beginnings, with Romans initially tapping known and easily accessible markets, and expanding on that basis at a later moment.”

87 Broekaert in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 29–47.88 For an overview on trade, subsistence and surplus theories, see Bresson 2016, 241–242.89 However, examples from Mesopotamia illustrate that this rather simple logic cannot be de-

duced from the sources: places rich in wool, such as Mesopotamia, also import wool textiles. 90 Fink in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 79.


A similar view on ancient trade can be encountered when analysing textile trade in ancient Greece. Alain Bresson states that “natural resources are unequally dis-persed and, hence, commerce is established in order to compensate for this natu-ral inequality”.91 This view is clearly based on trade as a provider of subsistence.92 Perhaps a small village could provide for itself and survive as an autarchic produc-tion and consumption unit, but in cities and ports, there was not sufficient local production to meet the needs of the inhabitants. According to this view, trade and distribution systems had to be put in place to secure food and clothing.

The Greek city-states followed the same rationale when concluding bilateral agreements and enforcing trade monopolies with the providers of necessary materi-als for the fleet.93

Trade as a Means to Meet the Demand for LuxuryAn alternative view is that by means of trade, elites gained access to luxury items which were not accessible locally.94 For instance, in Edward Gibbon’s monumental work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1789, Rome’s trade with the east was considered to target luxury goods ex-clusively.95 This view sees the craze for luxury as fuelling trade, and assumes that this trade is channelled through elite networks of trust, in order to cater to elite desires.96 This perspective is further inspired by anthropological works on gift-giving and conspicuous consumption.97 In studies of the ancient luxury trade, a special role is generally attributed to Phoenicians, still many ways an enigmatic people known for trading, although better known through literary texts than through archaeology.98 Their connection to true purple dye in particular gives Phoenicians the air of dealers

91 Bresson 2008, 135.92 This assumption is taken up by Spantidaki in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016),

125–138.93 Ps.-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. 2.11: εἰ γάρ τις πόλις πλουτεῖ ξύλοις ναυπηγησίμοις, ποῖ

διαθήσεται, ἐὰν μὴ πείσῃ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς θαλάττης; τί δ᾽ εἴ τις σιδήρῳ ἢ χαλκῷ ἢ λίνῳ πλουτεῖ πόλις, ποῖ διαθήσεται, ἐὰν μὴ πείσῃ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς θαλάττης; ἐξ αὐτῶν μέντοι τούτων καὶ δὴ νῆές μοί εἰσι, παρὰ μὲν τοῦ ξύλα, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ σίδηρος, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ χαλκός, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ λίνον, παρὰ δὲ τοῦ κηρός. (If some city is rich in ship-timber, where will it distribute it without the consent of the rulers of the sea? Again, if some city is rich in iron, copper, or flax, where will it distribute it without the consent of the rulers of the sea? However, it is from these very things that I have my ships: timber from one place, iron from another, copper from another, flax from another, wax from another. Translation by G. Bowersock.)

94 For discussion of theories related to luxury trade, see Bresson 2016, 343.95 Gibbon 1909, vol. 1 (first edition 1776), 59. On Gibbon’s general attitude to economic issues

see Pocock 1985, 143–156.96 Schneider 1977, 21: “Before the emergence of the capitalist world-system (...) most exchan-

ges between distant places involved the movement of luxuries.” Similarly, for the ancient Near East: Larsen 1987, 55: “It is essential to keep in mind that most of the trade served what we would call luxury needs or demands”. See also Braudel 2011 on the role of luxuries in the early forms of trade.

97 E.g. Mauss 1923–1924 or Gregory 1982.98 Garcia Ventura in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 15–27; Gaspa in this volume

(= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123.


i n luxury goods, satisfying elite networks.99 Georges Roux considers Phoenicians as providers of “rare items such as cotton, dyes, precious stones and ivory” to the Assyrian elites.100 Phoenicians – though certainly instrumentalised in the literary sources to stress cultural identities (and alterities) of the Greeks and other peoples in the Mediterranean – still seem to constitute a useful example of traders trading in all these goods, which are today almost invisible in the archaeological and textual documentation. They are mentioned as traders in the Bible where Assyria is also described as the place producing luxury carpets and embroidered textiles;101 they are also found in the works of Homer102 and Herodotus.103 Marvellous exotic goods are enumerated in Hermippos’ trade list and in other text fragments (Antiphanes

and Eubulus) from the Hellenistic period, these lists being a catalogue of traded goods noted with their place of origin.104 Most of the products mentioned are of an expensive and luxurious nature and not for subsistence purposes: sophisticated textiles for house furnishing, such as couches, pillows or carpets. These textiles for interior decoration were traded together with finer foodstuffs for the discriminating palate – fish, pork and cheese, raisins, figs, apples and pears, acorns, almonds and dates, and fine wheat flour.

Roberta Tomber, in her study of Indo-Roman trade, noted that trade was con-ventionally seen as driven by the search for luxury goods, but she makes a crucial observation: that the goods that started out as rare luxury goods were gradually consumed by increasingly larger groups of people:

Gems, silks and ostentatious consumption represent the luxury end of the market. But more and more it has been demonstrated that many objects of trade – inclu-ding pepper and aromatics – became necessities for the Roman way of life, requi-red for medicinal and religious purposes.105

The items that moved along the trans-Eurasian trade routes, often referred to as the Silk Roads, may be a good example of this change from extremely rare luxury goods to a more or less common article: the rarissime silk, in particular, seems to have become ever-present in the city of Rome in Imperial times.106 How else could one interpret Seneca’s – albeit perhaps exaggerated – lament:

99 Landenius Enegren & Meo (forthcoming).100 Roux 1964, 353; Roux 1985, 297. See Garcia Ventura 2016 for discussion. Ugarit docu-

ments indicate that Phoenicia played a key role in textile production as well (KTU 4.132 [= RS 15.004]).

101 E.g. 1 Kings 5.15 or Esra 3.7.102 E.g. Hom. Od. 14.287.103 E.g. Hdt. 1.1, 5.57–59, 6.47.104 Hermippus: fr. 63 (Koch I, 243); Aristophanes: fr. 193 and fr. 236 (Koch II, 92, 115);

Eubulus: fr. 19 (Koch II, 171); Eubulus fr. 121 (Koch II, 208). Knorringa 1926, 74–76, 134–136.

105 Tomber 2008, 16; the question of luxury textiles is also raised by Tatz in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 271–292.

106 Cf. Hildebrandt 2009; Ruffing 2014.


I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s de-cency, can be called clothes.107

Textiles, Trade, War and CrisesIs trade a peaceful alternative to war and aggression? Are wars and crises impedi-ments to trade? In Sebastian Fink’s interpretative framework, foreign goods are ac-quired either via trade or via war.108 Here, Fink launches another set of theories on war and aggression as instruments for politics, and, as is germane here, as instru-ments facilitating or generating trade and new markets. In this he follows theories of pure classical economist stock of the 19th century, which see war as a potential driving force for development, and aggression as a means of creating new trade op-portunities. Carl von Clausewitz is known for his statement that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means”,109 and in his principal work Vom Kriege, published in 1832, Clausewitz points out that the economic profit-seeking logic of commercial enterprise is equally applicable to the waging of war and negotiating for peace. Furthermore, in colonial economies of the modern world, too, the con-quest of land is perceived as a means for acquiring new trade opportunities. Several scholars of ancient Near Eastern history have seen aggression and war, leading to booty, as a thriving alternative strategy to obtain goods, and this strategy could replace, or supplement, trade. In earlier scholarship, in particular the aggressive ap-proach and acquisition by means of war were considered of the greatest importance in the analysis of the Assyrian economy, while the civil exchange of private business and trade was down-played.110 This model reflects the situation of Assyrian textual sources with massive documentation of royal and central administration, and much less documentation of the private business activities, as mentioned above. In Assyria, conquered regions were exploited through tribute and booty, and the situation is reg-istered as such in royal inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian and Persian kings. Textile booty and textile tributes are both attested.111 Thus, the inflow of goods is formal-ized in these two formats, which can either represent two different strategies, or can co-exist. War can thus supplement the exchange of goods based on business and trade, and this is especially emphasised in the scholarship of the ancient Near East, but incidentally, this is not only true for the ancient Near East, but also for ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.112 It is also true that war and conquest force people and clothes to move and therefore contribute to the general circulation, transmis-sion of techniques and styles, and reuse of clothing. Remains of non-local soldiers’ clothing have come to light in weapon deposits in Northern Europe and in Egyptian stone quarries.113

107 Sen. ben. 7.9.5: Video sericas vestes, si vestes vocandae sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut corpus aut denique pudor possit (…)

108 Fink in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 79–92.109 Clausewitz 1976 (originally published in German 1832), 87.110 See Renger 2003, 36.111 Gaspa in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 93–123; Graslin-Thomé in this volu-

me (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 63–77.112 On trade and war, see Lagger 2008, 489–494; Gleba 2014, 83–103; on the economic impact

of conquest see Bang 2012, 201–203.113 Möller-Wiering 2011; Mannering 2000.


An alternative theory on trade and war is that conflicts and instability are gen-erally impediments to profitable trade. In Greek thinking and literary texts, war (polemos) and internal conflicts (stasis) lead to famine (sitodeia), and shortages of resources (aporia tōn chrēmatōn).114 This situation of penury would rather prevent trade than fuel it, despite the potential market it could provide. When conducting research on ancient economic crises, scholars have focused primarily on famines and shortages.115 Trade, however, is usually not seen as part of the solution to famine and shortage; on the contrary, interrupted trade induces famines and crises. There is a huge body of research on monetary and financial economy and trade, based on ancient texts, numismatics and metallurgical analysis of metal compositions. Monetary challenges in antiquity concern both the deflation due to the reduced metallic value of coins, and the deflation induced by an amplification of the volume of coins. Financial challenges involve difficulties in payments, lack of money, credit problems and debts.116 Well-described financial crises include the debt crisis under Tiberius in 33 CE.117 To a certain degree, crises could be counteracted by political measures regulating debts and credits, and historian Jean Andreau believes in the monetary strength and stability of Roman times.118 Nevertheless, in the 3rd century CE, especially in the second half of the century, coins contain less and less silver.119 This, however, does not necessarily reflect a generalized economic crisis in this pe-riod, and there is a noteworthy price stability and lack of inflation according to the data provided from Egypt and Palestine between 215 CE to 274 CE. Inflation first makes a major impact from 280 CE - 360 CE with prices rising steeply by 14 to 20 times.120 The Edictum Diocletiani may have been issued in 301 CE precisely with the

114 Müller 2011, 333.115 Garnsey 1998, 274, 280. See also Garnsey 1988, 6. According to Paul Garnsey, in antiquity

shortages of food and other resources often existed, but real famines were rare. Paul Erd-kamp (1998), instead, sees the existence of famines in antiquity as a more recurrent pheno-menon which the populations had to endure.

116 It is crucial to distinguish between economic, monetary and financial crises in ancient eco-nomy. An example could be that a catastrophic harvest in antiquity would result in an economic crisis, but not in a monetary crisis.

117 Tac. ann. 6.17.1.118 Andreau 2007, 128: “les crises d’endettement et les crises de paiement se produisent à des

moments où les finances publiques ne vont pas si mal et où la monnaie est assez stable ou même très stable. Même au Ier siècle av. J.-C., et en dépit de la désorganisation politique et administrative, le système monétaire n’était pas aussi instable que les apparences pourraient le laisser croire”.

119 Concerning monetary challenges, it is important to note that earlier scholars viewed the decreasing metallic value of coins as problematic and resulting in a return to exchange sys-tems without the involvement of money. Thus, this would have a significant impact on trade. However, since the 1960s–1970s, scholars such as Carrié have proposed a new theory on the effects of the decreasing metallic value of coins, especially in the 4th century CE. Instead, they rather see a larger circulation of coins as a result. Carrié 2007, 140: “Plus personne aujourd’hui ne parle de la ‘grande catastrophe monétaire du IIIe siècle’ ni même de la crise des échanges et de la vie économique qui en aurait été la conséquence, articles de foi indiscutables de la science historique du siècle dernier. Un vaste consensus a reformulé la position dominante, qui dédramatise un désordre monétaire au demeurant incontestable et en relativise les effets.” See also Ruffing 2012.

120 Bagnall 1985; Ruffing 2006.


aim of regulating and stabilizing prices and trade in a time of political instability and inflation,121 especially for the benefit of soldiers and their cloth consumption. However, the extent to which the Edict actually had an impact on price behav-iour and traders’ behaviour is unknown, but the prices quoted in the Edict do not seem out of touch with reality.122 It seems that the Edict of Maximum Prices was particularly aimed at regulating prices at the frontiers of the Roman Empire where the presence of soldiers would impact local demand on markets and cause prices to rise.123 Textiles and clothing constitute a significant part of the items listed in great detail in the Edict,124 and this is again a relevant piece of information for the present discussion on textile trade and distribution.125

Innovations as Motor for (Textile) Trade?Moses I. Finley argued that the Greek and Roman worlds were in a certain sense ‘blocked’ in terms of technological progress, and their inhabitants lived an era of technological stagnation – thus that the ancient economy was scarcely influenced by innovations.126 Some years earlier, André Aymard held an even more radical opinion: according to him, antiquity categorically rejected any technical innovation.127 This assessment has, however, been heavily criticised. Against this standpoint, Peregrine Horden and Nicolas Purcell argue that there is an economic advantage in technol-ogy and innovation – and that people in the ancient world were well aware of it:

Technological complexity can be regarded as a form of intensification.128

Moreover, Alain Bresson stresses the impact of technological innovations by sug-gesting the stimulating hypothesis that innovations in the flour grinding tools in Classical Greece “freed up female workers, considerable numbers of whom were thus made available for work in textile production, ultimately resulting in an increase in the productivity of women’s labour and a distinct increase in overall prosperity.”129 When it comes to textile technology, it is often perceived as a stable and non-inno-vative craft (by primitivists and modernists alike). However, throughout antiquity, textile techniques develop and affect other fields of knowledge, or are influenced by innovations in other areas. This can be exemplified by iron shears, which represent an innovative tool for many sectors since the flexibility of iron gave new properties to the tool. In the realm of shepherding, shepherds in the Bronze Age harvested

121 Main editions: Lauffer 1971; Giacchero 1974; see Flemestad et al. (forthcoming).122 Wild 2014–2015, 12.123 Meißner 2000, 79–84. 124 Specialised papers on textiles and clothing in the Edict include: Erim et al. 1970, 132, with a

section on “clothing and cloth” written by John Peter Wild; Wild 2014–2015 on wool types; see also Wild 1964 and Flemestad et al. (forthcoming).

125 Bagnall 1985, 69 has observed that especially for military clothing, prices actually remained quite stable during the 4th century CE.

126 Finley 1965. For a more differentiated view see e.g. Schneider 1992; Meißner 2007. Also Greene 2000 and Wilson 2002 criticised Finley’s view (we thank Beate Wagner-Hasel and John Peter Wild for these references).

127 Aymard 1948.128 Horden & Purcell 2000, 292.129 Bresson 2016, 201–211.


handfuls of wool off the sheep, perhaps aided by knives, but the shears in the Iron Age made it possible to free the entire coat of wool off the sheep.130 This gave a new product, the fleece, and made shearing more efficient and less time consuming. Combing wool with iron combs was another textile innovation, supplementing and innovating the combing process, and yielding a new product: fine worsted yarns ex-clusively made of long-stapled fibres. Another innovation is the olive and wine press, which operates with a complex machinery of screws and gears. A similar press is used for cloth, and this is one of the many examples of innovations passing from one craft to another. Innovations not only changed production modes and shifted work-forces but also modified trade. For instance, Greeks would preserve and transport liquids in clay vessels or in skin containers, but in Roman times, the invention of the wooden barrel would represent more storage capacity and less container weight. This facilitated transportation, providing new opportunities for trade. Each of these in-novations represents a specialisation and, potentially, a competitive advantage. Such transmissions of textile techniques and patterns can occur within a single workshop, between local workshops, inter-regionally or via the circulation of pattern cards and samples.131 There is also strong evidence for the transmedial transfer of patterns and motifs between pottery and textiles as illustrated in the animal friezes on orientalis-ing style vessels and on the famous Koropi textile fragment.132

Modern Theories and Ancient TextilesReturning to our stated aim of both highlighting and exploring the theoretical frame-works of (textile) trade and distribution, Adam Smith’s seminal work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations certainly deserves special attention as a starting point for modern economic thought. In his opus magnum, published on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, the Scottish economist calls for leaving behind the mercantilist policy of erecting trade barriers, in order to facilitate exports and stop or slow down imports133 and instead developed his concept of relative prices by compar-ing cloth and wheat production in terms of labour and efficiency. Here is a strong continuity and parallel to antiquity where grain and textiles also constituted the two major players in trade.134 According to Smith, trade is a consequence of advantage,

130 Andersson Strand & Nosch (forthcoming).131 Stauffer 2008; Bogensberger in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 259–270;

Broekaert in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 55–70.132 Spantidaki in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 125–138; Burke in this volume

(= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 159–168 also illustrated the base of a statue in an Etruscan context with a pattern reminiscent of Phrygian patterns borders.

133 This conception can already be found in Plato, who suggested banning imports of purple dye and frankincense (Leg. 847c), and in Pliny, who deplores international trade as a poten-tial huge loss of resources for the sake of unnecessary luxuries imported from the East (Plin. NH 6.101 and 12.84; see also Strabo 2.5.12 and 17.1.13 for the annual number of Roman ships sailing from Egypt to India).

134 Papadopolou in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 193–209 approaches the ques-tion of the scale and importance of the textile trade versus the grain trade. Concerning Egypt, both in Ptolemaic and Roman times, she concludes that “the textile market was only second to the grain market”. She observes that there seems to exist a parallel between textiles and grain in Egypt as the two major sources of wealth, and this is mirrored in the foundati-on myths of Alexandria, by some explained as outlined by visible traces with barley and by


and here he introduces the concept of absolute advantage.135 Adam Smith and other economists after him136 conclude that households and companies in antiquity would gain by differentiating productions and specializing, which leads to relative advan-tages for them. From Raymond Vernon stems the theory that a new product will follow a certain life-cycle, from the place of invention and the original raw materi-als, to a matured product produced also in other places and with raw material from other places, until the point when it is eventually standardized and imported into its initial place of origin.137 The difficulty is that for the ancient textile economy we are unable to pinpoint when and where inventions were made, i.e. the beginning of a life cycle. However, Vernon’s life-cycle mechanisms are recognisable in textile produc-tion and trade: flax cultivation and linen textile production were a core element of Bronze Age agriculture and craft in Messenia and perhaps a competitive advantage for the western Peloponnese. Likewise, extremely fine linen fabrics are well attested from Early Bronze Age Egypt and must have constituted a competitive advantage.138 In the 1st millennium BCE, flax cultivation had become common and spread all over Greece and eventually became a product known to be imported into the Aegean, with the home industry and specialisation of Greece being neglected.139 Purple ex-traction and dyes are assumed to have been a specialisation of the Minoans in the early 2nd millennium BCE and represented an advantage which could have poten-tially catalysed Minoan exports of purple wool products, but according to legend, it is the Phoenician traders who took over this knowledge and exploitation in the beginning of the 1st millennium, and the specialisation became widespread in the Mediterranean, with hubs such as Hermione in the Southern Argolis in the Classical and Hellenistic period, or Ibiza in Roman times.140

Economist Evelyn Korn uses Smith’s concepts as well as other modern econom-ic models to review how scholars analyse and perceive ancient economic systems. In doing so, she demonstrates how modern economic concepts, such as advantages, incentives, the gain of byproducts, branding, product lifecycles, or imperfect competition, can be used to study ancient sources on textiles. Branding, for example, seems to be a very common phenomenon in antiquity. The use of toponyms to designate textile origins and consequently to create a ranked quality system already consti-tutes an integral part of textile terminologies in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.141 This toponymic labet system could indicate the origin of the raw material (wool or flax), or the place of manufacture, but in the light of modern economic theory, the

others explained as outlined on the model of Alexander’s chlamys, his Macedonian military wool cloak (Diod. Sic. 17.52; Strabo 17.1.8; Plut. Alex. 26.5, see also Ogden 2014).

135 Smith 1776; Bresson 2016, 343–345.136 E.g. David Ricardo, who in his work from 1817 On the Principles of Political Economy and

Taxation introduced the concepts of relative advantage and comparative advantage empha-sizes the advantage gained through specialisation, but even more on the competitive advan-tage gained by those who could produce most efficiently.

137 Vernon 1966.138 On Messenian flax in the Bronze Age, see Nosch (forthcoming). On archaeological speci-

mens of Egyptian linen, see catalogue in Skals et al. 2015.139 Cf. Gleba 2004; Nosch 2014.140 Burke 1999; Bresson 2016, 361–364; Alfaro & Costa 2008.141 Michel & Nosch 2010.


toponyms may alternatively convey specialization and absolute advantage. Examples include amorgina (clothing from the island of Amorgos),142 stromata/eria milésia (cloaks and wool from Miletus),143 Coan vestes,144 or ‘Laconian shoes’.145 The perhaps most numerous examples of clothing terms are found in the Edict of Maximum Prices.146 Elisabetta Lupi takes this line of thinking even further in her analysis of the textile brand of the toponym Sybaris as the summit of extravagance backed up by the association with the extravagant Milesians and their luxurious Milesian wool.147 The source is Timaios who highlights the luxury trade between Sybaris and Miletus. But was he reporting on real trade patterns, or did he write this to cater to an Athenian audience for whom Milesian wool was a well-known luxury item and the element of a Greek luxury discourse? This example emphasizes the difficul-ties in using literary sources for trade studies, and the challenge of mapping trade networks by using topographic references of goods. Branding is thus not only used by producers and traders, but also used as an instrument of propaganda in literary discourse. In ancient literature, wool is often associated with Athenian citizenship, modesty, male life style, and democracy,148 while linen can align with a perception of the Ionian style of wealth, Egyptian foreignness and feminine behaviour.149 Indeed, in Roman times, Augustus is praised for wearing home-spun wool garments, made by the female members of his family.150 The crucial place for this cultural encounter of textile fibres is Egypt, renowned for its exquisite linen textiles, and in Ptolemaic and Roman times co-existing with cultures boasting of a long wool tradition. Maria Papadopoulou contrasts wool and linen in the political contexts of Ptolemaic Egypt and especially studies the clothing in Zenon’s archive. She posits a series of dichoto-mies: wool versus linen, Greek versus Egyptian, city versus land.151 Later, in Imperial Roman times, Herbert Graßl observed that wool and linen products continue to be commercialized separately.152 Throughout antiquity, fibres are indeed a battle-field of cultures and values, perhaps more than garment types are, and the evidence

142 Spantidaki in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 128.143 Ar. Ran. 542; Lys. 729; Av. 493; Timaios, FGrH 566 F 50 (see Frass in this volume [= Droß-

Krüpe & Nosch 2016], 139–158; Lupi in this volume [= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016], 169–191).

144 This term for silk that is commonly used in Latin poetry. It refers to very fine fabrics with a connection to the island of Cos and the legend of Pamphile who invented silk weaving there. Hildebrandt 2016.

145 Ar. Vesp. 1158, Thesm. 142, 421, Eccl. 74, 269, 345, 508, 542. These shoes or sandals may come from Laconia, but since Laconian footwear is so often mentioned, it rather suggests that the term instead designated a certain type or fashion of shoes, cf. Frass in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 139–158.

146 Wild 2014–2015.147 Lupi in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 169–191.148 Geddes 1987; Cohen 2001.149 Nosch 2014.150 Suet. Aug. 73: Veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est ab sorore et uxore et filia nepti

busque confecta; togis neque restrictis neque fusis, clavo nec lato nec angusto...151 Papadopoulou in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 193–209.152 Graßl in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 221–230.


f or the moral connotations of wool as opposed to the other decadent fibres such as linen and silk is widespread in ancient sources.153

In the Near Eastern as well as in the classical Mediterranean world all kinds of textiles were exchanged, both the finest silks and the coarsest wool. Not only textiles and garments, but also fibres,154 yarns, dyes and raw materials are traded alike, even over considerable distances. The wool trade is known from Old Assyrian documents of the early 2nd millennium,155 and isotopic tracing has illustrated a Bronze Age wool trade in Northern and Central Europe as well.156 In Diocletian’s Price Edict we find separate entries for a range of wool types, from simple to the most exquisite qualities, and if not from Afghanistan, then at least from very distant producers.157 Washed wool of various qualities is a product in itself, and Strabo (3.2.6) tells of Iberia which makes more profit from the wool trade than from making textiles from it.158

In general terms, most economic theories explain trade as the result of differ-ences in supply and demand, prices and production modes. Alain Bresson assumes that trade in Athens was triggered by the increases in Attic coinage in the 5th century when a new silver ore was discovered and exploited in Laurion.159 In modern eco-nomic theory, it is accepted that export performance is directly related to a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and has a stimulating effect on a country’s econo-my.160 The balance of payments in most political systems is controlled and regulated via taxes and incentives. Classical trade theories, such as Adam Smith and Riccardo’s concepts of advantages, being based on resources, production efficiency or innova-tion, are not unlike the concerns of traders and rulers in antiquity.161 However, these theories are now centuries old. It is striking that, apart from some cautious steps towards New Institutional Economics,162 more recent economic theories, e.g. on businesses’ internationalisation, market analyses, consumer behaviour, have barely been integrated into the study of the ancient economy.

So, why textile trade? Is it only a matter of price competition, comparative ad-vantages in labour, or domestic self-sufficiency? Iconographical, documentary and literary sources clearly illustrate that people did not simply buy garments when they were cheap or when they need them, but also bought textiles and clothes to dem-onstrate their wealth or even to follow some kind of fashion. Thus, in the realm of

153 Wagner-Hasel 2015.154 On linen trade in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, see Nosch 2014 as well as Spantidaki

2016 and in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 125–138.155 Veenhof 1972; Michel 2001.156 Frei et al. 2009a and 2009b as well as 2015.157 John Peter Wild discusses the reality of references to sheep’s wool or Cashmere goat hair

from Afghanistan in Diocletian’s Edict, but also sees the irony in the fact that “some com-mentators are perplexed as to why and how such a commodity from far beyond the eas-tern Roman frontiers should have come to the attention of Diocletian’s officials. (Silk from China, by contrast, raises no eyebrows.)”, Wild 2014–2015, 17.

158 Wild 2014–2015.159 Bresson 2012 as well as 2016, 278, 342.160 Morgan & Katsikeas 1997, 68.161 See Bresson 2016, who also uses Smith and Riccardo as main trade theorists; Korn in this

volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 1–13.162 E.g. Droß-Krüpe, Föllinger & Ruffing 2016.


textiles, when interpreting production only according to the criteria of comparative advantage in terms of resources and labour, time and prices can never be the sole rel-evant criteria, since even in high cost areas, people continued to produce their own textiles, and even in the low cost areas people would still import textiles from else-where. Moreover, there is not necessarily an opposition between home production and acquiring textiles from market traders, both activities happily coexisted. The textile realm is thus a highly promising area to observe complex trade mechanisms at play; but it is also one of the best places to observe how people in antiquity did not necessarily act as homines oeconomici: textile trade transactions, selling and buying, are also based on tastes and fashions, new fibres and patterns, on confidence in and admiration for your favourite weaver, in trusting the trader, on negotiation and com-munication. In order to better understand these mechanisms, we should also look to theories applied in the social sciences, where group behaviour, individuality and psychology, tastes and peers constitute objects of study.163

Although, as mentioned above, Social Network Analysis is certainly en vogue in current historical and archaeological research, commercial networks are often not at the centre of scholarly attention.164 Apart from Eivind Seland, who explicitly applies Social Network Analysis on ancient textile trade, Ines Bogensperger, in her examina-tion of how to order a textile in ancient times, deals with producer – consumer net-works. She addresses the early stage of textile procurement, when orders are placed and decisions on colours and shapes are made.165 Her discussion of the Egyptian papyrological sources highlights that both trust and a shared concept of qualities are necessary elements of this stage of trade. When words and technical terms are insufficient, e.g. when not being able to describe the exact hue desired, clients could send samples of dyed wool and the producers would then be able to copy it. The use of textile samples as a visual and tactile proof of quality and design in addition to verbal or written descriptions seems to be common.166 Circulating samples of yarn and cloth is still today characteristic of textile commerce, and samples may in fact be one of the defining features of the tools and practices of textile trade. The sample becomes the non-verbal token of communication between the weaver and dyer, the trader and the consumer. These textile samples exemplify the ‘international’ nature of textile trade and the practicalities of crossing language boundaries while being traded. Evidently, most production orders were preceded by choices, negotiations and discussions, mostly taking place between textile craftspeople, traders and cli-

163 Veblen 1899 on luxury consumption and capitalism; Barthes 1967 on the fashion system; Bourdieu 1977 on habitus and cultural and social capital; Weiner & Schneider 1989 on an-thropological approaches to clothing; Toft & MacKinney-Valentin 2014 on fashion theory to understand early modern textile consumption behaviour.

164 The good news is that this is increasingly changing. Apart from the ground-breaking re-search done on Greek and Roman economic associations for decades (e.g. Gabrielsen 2001; Broekaert 2011), one might mention Broekaert 2013, or the conference Tracing Networks: Communicating Knowledge in Antiquity and the Digital Age at the British Academy (or-ganised by Lin Foxhall and José Fiadeiro) in 2013, along with Lavan 2015, Mack 2015, Brughmans & Poblome 2016, and Droß-Krüpe (forthcoming).

165 Bogensperger 2014.166 Cf. Rhet. Her. 4.5.9, in which the author compares the writer’s text sample with the textile

merchant’s textile sample, since both exemplify the quality and skill of the producers.


ents, as part of market communication, conversations, gossip, messages passed by and expressed in words, and facial expressions. Only a few texts render these nego-tiation and decision processes visible to us. They are a testament to the choices and logic that form the grounds of trade, illuminating the dense network of commercial actors involved. It is notable how the papyri contain this remarkable blend of private correspondence, communication and technical textile terms. The actors of textile networks are likewise highlighted by Herbert Graßl who emphasizes the social foun-dations of trade by demonstrating how traders come to private houses to display their goods and conduct business. Graßl also addresses the problem of competition between textile traders and pricing agreements. In sum, the ancient textile network becomes highly tangible when analysing its participants – particularly the traders, but also the producers167 and consumers168 – and their relationships.

Textiles were traded with other products. Wool, wine, wood, and bronze are all included in the cargo of a ship arriving in an Egyptian harbour according to an Aramaic papyrus dated 475/454 BCE.169 Wool was transported with grain and salted fish on the great ship Syracusa, built for the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse ca. 240 BCE.170 Textiles for household furnishing, such as couches and pillows from Sicily, carpets (stromata), and pillows from Corinth, were traded along with food, fish, pork, c heese, fruit, nuts and fine wheat flour.171 Thus, if we are to believe these lists, textiles were traded along with highly perishable goods, of a fine quality and destined for the wealthier citizens in the cities. As the Periplus Maris Erythraei in-dicates, cloth and garments were in Roman times traded together with metal or metal objects (copper, brass, iron) as well as with groceries such as wine, olive oil, wheat, rice and the like – all items of rather average quality.172 Thus, while there is rich evidence of specialised textile products, there is no evidence that textiles were traded alone or along their own trade routes: garments and other textile products were traded with other goods, of all kinds and qualities.

Textile trade patterns seem to be governed by a certain degree of stability. While Gaspa argues that there was a significant shift in the pattern of trade between the Bronze and the Iron Age, as shown by the enlargement of the trade networks and caravan routes in the 1st-millennium Near East and the concomitant development of strategies of control of them by large polities, Flohr argues that imperial patterns for the wool trade date back to structures established during the Roman Republic or earlier. That some textile toponyms consistently occur in epigraphy and ancient literature testifies to a certain degree a persistency and a rather conservative or slow development of the textile trade network. This also suggests that trading places would not change from one year to another, and not change much even with price competition over the short term.

167 Droß-Krüpe 2011; Flohr 2014; Tatz in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 271–292.168 The consumer side is also considered in Frass in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016),

139–158, especially individual behaviour and choices in Classical Athens. 169 Porten & Yardeni 1993, 82–193 (text C3.7); Briant & Descat 1998; Tal 2009; Bresson 2016,

293.170 Bresson 2016, 88, 185, 193; Athenaios 5.209a.171 Hermippos’s trade list and lists from comic fragments from the Hellenistic period. See above

note 105.172 E.g. PME 6 and 14.


Even if no maps were produced in antiquity, and we rarely know of ancient itineraries from the textual evidence,173 archaeology presents us with both new and conventional methods to determine provenance.174 Stylistic analysis is the back-bone of archaeological typologies, and the massive body of work in this field makes provenance studies, especially of pottery and metal objects, a rather secure field of interpretation. Certainly, foreign items and material in Southern Europe, such as cotton,175 silk or amber alert the historian and archaeologist to potential trade, and in rare cases the place of origin can be easily determined, such as the in-woven Chinese characters in textiles from Palmyra.176 New methods in strontium isotopic tracing conducted on organic material can determine whether the object – textile, fibre or person – grew locally or outside the local geological zone.177 Textile analysis has also developed a series of precise and sophisticated indicators of locality and provenance, and even if they do not all apply universally, they work very well relatively speak-ing, by examining the textile hallmarks in a certain region and determining what a ppears as local characteristics and what appears exceptional or, perhaps, foreign production techniques.178

***In conclusion: In antiquity, textiles were traded over long distances, in international trade, on a regional scale, and between households and workshops in the same town or village. Textile trade can take the form of retail, and come from both locally set-tled and itinerant traders and producers. Trade was mainly conducted by men and to a lesser degree by women.

Textiles are relatively invisible in the archaeological record, while they are well attested as traded goods in ancient texts. Textiles and garments abound in some of our largest bodies of ancient textual evidence: the archives at Ebla, Mari, several places in 1st-millennium Assyria and Babylonia, the Mycenaean palaces, and the let-ters on Old-Assyrian trade on private hands; from the Brauron catalogues, papyrus letters, the Periplus Maris Erythraei, and Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices. Still, textiles have not often been considered a resource in the reconstruction of ancient trade, perhaps from a feeling of having exhausted textual material already. It appears surprising, nevertheless, that the numerous references to textile produc-tion, trade and consumption in ancient texts, especially in papyri, are not often explored as a source of economic relevance. Archaeology also abounds with textile tools – loom weights, spindle whorls, needles, bobbins – but they have so far only rarely been used for the understanding of ancient economic patterns.179 In contrast,

173 For the Periplus Maris Erythraei, see Casson 1989; Wild & Wild 2014 as well as Seland 2010 andin this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 211–219.

174 For an overview of these, see Harlow & Nosch 2014, 16–19.175 For a possible identification of an early example of cotton, see Margariti, Protopapas &

Orphanou 2011. Early archaeological silk finds are with right questioned by Bender Jørgensen 2013.

176 Stauffer 1996; Schmidt-Colinet, Stauffer & al-As’ad 2000.177 Frei et al. 2009a; 2009b.178 See Shamir in this volume (= Droß-Krüpe & Nosch 2016), 231–245 for the use of produc-

tion techniques to detect textiles produced non-locally.179 A few exceptions worth mentioning is Lawal 2014 and Meo 2014; 2015.


pottery vessels are very rarely mentioned in texts but pottery fragments are omni-present in the archaeological record. It is therefore interesting to observe that until the present generation, ancient historians and archaeologists welcome data on pot-tery distribution for the reconstruction of ancient economy and trade,180 but tend to ignore textiles in their analyses. Likewise, coins constitute a popular basis for recon-structions of ancient economic mechanisms. However, we need to consider carefully how far pottery fragments and coins can be used as proxies for trade networks, or as material remains of a textile trade.

Based on the current state of knowledge, we argue that buying clothing can-not automatically be equated to the purchase of grain or metals in antiquity. Transportation cost is the first major difference since textiles are light (as opposed to metals) and not readily perishable (as opposed to food). The intimate, identity-shaping and tactile qualities of textiles and garments make them form a singular category of goods; the long production time and complex craft required induce a strong component of trust and personal relationship between producer, seller, buyer and wearer; a quality textile is an item of investment, and the possibility to re-sell it as a second hand product is again more comparable to metals and furniture than to grain, oil or wine.

There are, however, also significant similarities between the textile trade and other types of trade. Textiles are traded with other goods, and they follow the same trade routes. Also, like a series of other goods such as wine and food stuffs, textiles are characterised by toponyms which brand the quality. Textiles are produced al-most everywhere, just like oil and grain, yet still traded in all directions.

As vigorous as the discussion about the definition and interpretation of the ancient economy might be, and as diverse as its methodical and theoretical ap-proaches are, a strong consensus exists today on the significance and value of tex-tiles. However, as we have outlined above, works on trade theory and on ancient economies and trade do not always give fabrics and clothing particular attention. The research focus in studies on ancient trade and economy lies on monetarization, on the production and distribution of food (grains, wine and oil) and, albeit to a lesser extent, on luxury and/or exotic products. In ancient societies, textiles are rated as absolutely essential goods. Considering their significance in the ancient world and their value as key economic assets, textiles hold a significant potential for the understanding of the ancient economy and should thus be given more attention by scholars. Bringing them to light and making them the subject of more detailed economic analyses in their own right was a central objective of the present volume.

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