Spinning Technology in Classical Attica: The Iconographic Evidence

Vase painters from Classical Athens left us a rich repertoire of representations including spinning women. Between the late 6th and the early 4th c. BCE spinning scenes became increasingly popular in Attic workshops, adding to our knowledge of spinning as a form of labour rich in social meaning. In the past, these spinning scenes have been the subject of several detailed iconogra-phic studies. Those, however, focused almost exclusively on contextual analysis, with “who is spinning” as the main question to be answered. Attic spinning scenes are not unknown in ancient textile studies and are often quoted as a precious source. Nonetheless, no detailed study was ever conducted on these scenes to investigate spinning itself rather than spinners. This study thus aims to fill in the gap, investigating these representations solely as evidence for spinning technology. Two fundamental questions are therefore raised: “how are the women spinning” and “what are they spinning with”? To answer the first question, a thorough gestural analysis was carried out in order to assess not only how the women are spinning, but also to what extent vase painters tried – and managed – to “accurately” represent this predominantly female task. The second question is more relevant for present and future research alike, as to this day very little is known about ancient distaffs and spindles. These fundamental tools are rarely attested in the archaeological record and recognizing them is not always an easy task. This paper presents a careful examination of the iconographic material, contextualised through comparisons with excavated tools from the Greek world as well as from the wider Mediterranean. It is thus suggested that vase painting is a reliable and fruitful source of information to (re)identify spinning tools in the archaeological record. By investigating how the spinning craft was represented by Attic painters, alternating between verisimilitude and stylization, this study ultimately aims at a better understanding of spinning technology and spinning tools in Attica.