Spokespersons:

Margarita Gleba mgleba@hum.ku.dk

Judit Pásztókai-Szeöke judit@hum.ku.dk

The great mobility and the vast exchange of luxury goods within the borders of the Roman Empire and beyond is a firmly known subject, but the importance of textiles as a rather easy transportable material has been underestimated in its amount of inherited information. The origin of fibres reveals the trade of textiles and raw materials over large distances throughout the Roman Empire. It makes it possible to determine special regional production which may have formed central parts of the regional economy, it is also possible to locate production centres and to get information on the organisation and infrastructure of production and trade even in large scale co-operations, and we are able to trace the idea of copying foreign techniques and motives by using regionally common facilities. Therefore this study-group focuses on the technological development in textile production and its influence on the Roman economical structures.

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NEWS

Study Group E has held an international conference on June 7, 2009 connected to the 4th General Meeting at Hallstatt on

"Work and Identity: The agents of textile production and exchange in the Roman period"

The conference papers will be published in a conference book, and shall be submitted to the speakers by the end of December 2009.

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