The 13 articles in this book cover various overlapping and intersecting aspects of making and trading textile products in the pre-Roman and Roman world. The first three chapters deal with Iron Age textile production in Italy (Gleba and Lipkin) and Austria (Grömer); others with Roman Noricum (Gostenčuk), Northern Italy and Southern Gaul (Liu), Pompeii and Ostia (Flohr and Dickmann), the Roman province of Asia (Benda-Weber), Roman Egypt (Gällnö), and trade with the East via Egypt and India (Albaladejo Vivero and Droß-Krüpe). As always, a major concern is the sources and how much can be squeezed out of them. The authors use a wide range of evidence, varying according to topic: surviving textiles (especially from the salt mines of Austria); the tools used, found both in graves and settlements (Lipkin focuses on finds from female graves in Latium and South Etruria; Dickmann analyses the installations in the House of the Postumii at Pompeii, concluding they were premises used by feltmakers); the lead tags used mostly by clients leaving their clothes to be cleaned, re-dyed or mended (discussed by both Gostenčuk and Radman-Livaja, who analyses the large numbers surviving from Siscia in Pannonia, now in Zagreb); iconography and inscriptions, both frequently from funerary contexts (Larsson Lovén examines both information about and attitudes to women working with textiles); literary texts appear sporadically, but given particular attention is the Periplus Maris Erythraei and the information it reveals about the trade in textiles in the East (discussed by both Albaladejo Vivero and Droß-Krüpe), while Gällnö presents the (only?) four papyri from Roman Egypt which mention female spinners.

The papers also consider production of and trade in a variety of different fabrics (wool especially, but also linen, cotton, silk, dyed purple and red cloth, and even cloth woven with gold thread), and various processes and techniques. Spinning as women's work receives a lot of attention, in spite of (or perhaps rather because of) its tendency to slip out of sight in the sources. Several authors comment on the amount of spinning required to weave one garment, and the fact that spinning (wool, at least) appears to have been exclusively work for women at all times. A major question which recurs in several papers is the nature of women's involvement in textile production: was spinning always a part-time household-based occupation, or did women spin full-time as a profession? The picture tends to be obscured by the ideology of the ideal virtuous wife who ‘works wool’ at home. To what extent and in what circumstances might women be seen as ‘specialists’, and were women involved in other aspects of the textile business too?

The products discussed encompass a full range from home-made textiles for household use, via those of coarser fabrics and simple garments traded locally, to the highest quality luxury items (such as those made in some locations in Asia and imported from China and elsewhere in the East). Several authors are interested in the organisation of the production of textiles, the size of the establishments in which they were processed (from household to large manufactories or workshops), and the role of the professional organisations (including ‘guilds’) which textile workers formed (Liu and Benda-Weber discuss the wide range of occupations represented by profession-based associations, and Flohr examines the role of the owl and feast of Minerva in the construction of a common identity and work-place team-building among the fullones at Pompeii). In addition to the production of textiles, several papers also consider their trade and distribution, identifying trade routes, traders and what was traded (not only the high-end goods).

Although each author writes on one quite specific area of interest this book works surprisingly well as a whole: the 13 snapshots work together to give a coherent picture of current research concerns in relation to the Roman (and pre-Roman) textile business. The authors are active researchers, many of whom have published elsewhere on similar topics. All the papers are in English, and make accessible to an English-speaking audience information which might otherwise be difficult to locate and access. I have just one complaint: the book does not contain any biographical information about the authors: I would like to know more about them.