Archeologia tessile nella Venetia romana tra storia e archeologia: i casi di Altino, Padova e Verona

In this paper are presented some results of two recent scientific projects about Roman textile archaeology carried out by scholars and students of Padua University: the “Pondera” project (2009-2014) and the “TRAMA Textiles in Roman Archaeology. Methods and analysis” project (still in progress). After a brief methodological introduction, the attention is focused on literary sources and archaeological evidences concerning the wool production in three of the most important cities of the ancient Venetia region, in the North East of Italy: Altino, Padua and Verona. Firstly, the analysis of some ancient authors’ quotations about the quality of the raw material (wool) and fabrics is provided, then functional and morphometric parameters of loom weights are discussed. Considering the possibility of identifying the fabrics from the physical characteristics of the loom weights, the goal is to verify the existence of a correlation between morphometric parameters of loom weights found in the three cities and their countryside and the information provided by the literary sources. This combined approach reveals different production dynamics and sheds new light on the textile economy of the area.