T he achievement of textile producers in Roman Britain is highlighted most strikingly by two sets of entries in the Edict of Diocletian, a conspectus of traded goods and services available across the Empire, published in A.D. 301. The British birrus, a hooded cape of wool, is ranked equal sixth in a list of fourteen categories of birrus distinguished from one another by price and quality. 1 A corresponding, but shorter, list of tapetia, wool rugs, puts both the British first-class and second-class grades ahead of all the rest: the British tapete, in short, was second to none. 2 No other British product was deemed worthy of mention by the compilers of the Edict; prima facie, therefore, one could argue that textile production was Britain's leading industry by the late third century A.D. Can such a notion be substantiated? Since the last survey of the textile industry of Roman Britain in 1970 3 new material has been uncovered and new perspectives developed. In what follows I will assess or reassess the data, reviewing the economic as well as the technological aspects. 4 The corpus of textiles and textile-related artefacts is comparatively meagre, so any economic evaluation must inevitably be coloured by current thinking about the Roman economy as a whole and risks being overtaken by shifts of emphasis. Some recent reviews of the economic structure of the British province have looked no further than to pottery manufacture for insights into industrial performance and the nature of trade and exchange within and across provincial boundaries. 5 To the archaeologist, pottery survives in statistically seductive quantities and its study is largely untrammelled by written sources; 6 but Keith Hopkins famously asked: 'Would the distribution map of the ancient wool trade look like recent maps of the distribution of ancient pots? The answer to this question is surprisingly critical for the study of the ancient economy.' 7 In reacting to that challenge I will deal with the stages of textile manufacture in their traditional order: some represent virtually independent industries, but all are ultimately interlocked. FIBRES AND THEIR PREPARATION Sheep's wool and flax were the principal cloth fibres of Roman Britain, supplemented for specific functions (cordage, sailcloth, etc.) by hemp and occasionally by animal hair. Silk appears as an import. 8 1
