178 BARBARA TSAKIRgIS
Immediately we should ask the question, where did the sixty-seven other
households obtain their clothing and cloth furnishings? In the poorly pre-
served Villa CC, forty-three weights were found having fallen in a row 1.1
meters long, the best evidence at the site for a loom erected at the time of
the destruction by Philip’s troops (Cahill 2002 : 171). While one room at
Olynthus contained seventy-four weights, twenty-five rooms contained ten
to twenty-five, seven rooms contained twenty-five to forty-three, and five
rooms had more than forty-three. The rooms with textile implements were
quite various in their location in the houses, although almost every one had
clear provision for light. Weaving took place in seven pastades, five courts, and
two exedrae. The most complete weaving assemblage came from the House of
Many Colors, where forty-one loom weights, a spindle whorl, and an epinetron
were recovered.
Most of the finds I have just cited constitute evidence for textile production
to meet the needs of the household, but the great number of loom weights
recovered from some Olynthian houses suggest the commercial manufacture
of textiles in these residences. House Av9 contained loom weights enough to
stock four looms. Houses Aviii7 and 9 were combined into one dwelling and
two large clusters of loom weights were found here, 247 in the pastas (roofed
northern portico) and 50 in a nearby room. House Aiv9 contained 133 weights
and Houses Av10 and Avii9 contained 88 each. In all of these buildings, the
pottery assemblages represent living on a scale beyond the needs of a few shop
slaves and it is reasonable to identify the buildings as houses. One marked
contrast between the finds in the houses where cloth was manufactured for
household needs and those where evidence suggests commercial production is
that the loom weight sets in the first were composed of a varied collection of
different sizes and shapes, while those in the latter were quite uniform in shape
and weight. The consistency among the weights suggests that the cloth pro-
duced in textile factories was made to more exacting standards with weights
of the same size, used to make the weave even. The weights from the putative
commercial factories were also of recognizably lighter weight than those from
the houses, indicating that the professional weavers were producing finer tex-
tiles than those made in the home.
The distribution of loom weights in many Hellenistic houses parallels that
recorded from the Classical houses, even though many houses of the later
period are more extensive in their ground plans with separate areas of the
residence devoted to entertaining and domestic tasks. No loom weights are
published from the houses at Eretria, but several were found in pyre burials at
the site (Metzger 1978 : 81–8). Only singletons were recovered from the houses
at Hellenistic Morgantina, which was abandoned at the end of its life, thus pro-
viding the residents the opportunity to remove all useful items (Tsakirgis forth-
coming). Deonna ( 1938 : 154) admits bluntly that most loom weights found in