176 BARBARA TSAKIRgIS
Confirmation of the industrial activity in Building Z may come from the
several pyres recovered from under its floors in phase 3. Rotroff ( 2009 : 43) has
convincingly connected the deposition of similar pyres recovered in both
shops and houses around the Agora as motivated by workshop activity and the
attempts by the artisans to ward off the dangers inherent in many trades. The
pyres contain miniature vessels of several recurring types (especially saucers
and chytriai), fragmentary bones of ovicaprids, and distinct traces of burning,
and are found in private buildings where evidence of industrial activity is also
present. Spinning and weaving would have caused less severe injuries to the
workers than would firing pottery and working metals, but the deposits were
likely intended to ward off danger to the product as well as to the producers.
The material evidence for spinning and weaving in the farmhouses in the
Attic countryside is slight, but does exist. One whorl was found outside the
Vari house and two whorls and two weights were recovered in the Dema
house (Vari: Jones et al. 1973 : 373; Dema: Jones et al. 1962 : 83). If sheep were
pastured near these Attic farms, the first stage of textile production might have
begun in the countryside with the pasturing of the flock and the shearing
of wool. A rural site where evidence for spinning predominates over that for
weaving is Classical Pylos (Coleman 1986 : passim). One house there contained
eight loom weights, another had just one, but 118 whole or fragmentary spin-
dle whorls were found there. This might be another instance of wool being
spun near the site where the sheep were pastured and shorn.
Outside of Athens, the evidence for textile production in Classical houses
exists, but is often scanty. Only a few lead weights appear in the publica-
tions of the Priene houses, whether from their original Classical phase or their
Hellenistic rebuilding (Wiegand and Schrader 1904 : 322). Similarly, seven lead
weights and one of iron were catalogued from the houses at Thasos (Grandjean
1988 : 262). While it is possible that unbaked clay, rude stones, or more metal
weights were used in the houses at these sites to weight the warp threads,
nothing else survives to give evidence of textile production. The evidence is
stronger at Orraon, where stone supports in an inner room once served as
counterweights for the vertical beams of the loom resting against one wall
and associated weights prove that the supports served a loom. A second loom
was set up in another room of the same house, as similar stone supports and
weights attest. At late Classical Halieis, eight to twenty-five loom weights were
found in each of five houses (Ault 2005 : 78, 111, 117, 122, 128, 136). No spindle
whorls were recovered. The greatest number of weights was found in House E,
although all twenty-five were in the same room (Ault 2005 : 136). The evidence
indicates textile work, but not the extent of that production.
In western Greece, there is considerable evidence for weaving recovered
from the Classical houses at Himera. In Insula II, which comprises ten houses,