Industry and Inheritance at Hellenistic Morgantina

Abstract

Recent excavations of a modestly appointed house at the site of Morgantina in east-central Sicily recovered 175 loom weights or fragments thereof. In this study, we combine a detailed contextual analysis with new methodologies developed by the Center for Textile Research in Copenhagen in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of textile production in this house, the House of the Two Mills. Using these methods, we are able to identify the specific weights within the larger assemblage that most probably formed a single set, used together for weaving at this location. Moreover, the results of this analysis indicate that the loom weights that constituted this set would not have been produced and acquired all at once, but must have been accumulated by the household slowly over time. We propose that the most probable mechanism by which this slow process of accumulation played out would have been through household members passing down these textile tools as heirlooms across generations. We argue that in the process these weights would have been viewed by their users as having a value beyond their mere utilitarian function, instead becoming materializations of memory and the affective bonds formed in the intergenerational transfer of craft traditions. We conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the study of heirloom objects in archaeology and how a contextual understanding of broader Greek social institutions and practices can aid us in parsing peculiarities of the archaeological record.