Sure. When archaeologists are excavating, one of the things that they do is try and figure out who was at a site -- was it just men here, were there women, what about children, that sort of thing. In some cases, you have specifically gendered artifacts: spindle whorls are always, always associated with women (at least in the classical world), because we have no literary, epigraphic, or archaeological evidence that men ever span. Other fiber and textile production tools, like loom weights, are also associated with women because textile production was a female-oriented process. A lot of the time, jewelry like brooches, rings, and earrings (or what's left of them: sometimes this is just beads) is strongly associated with women too. Some archaeologists do a lot with shoes in order to determine whether they belonged to men, women, or children. (This is especially common while excavating Roman forts, because a major debate is on whether or not there were actually women within the forts or not.) All of this seems pretty straight-forward, right? If you have these artifacts, then there were probably women at that site.
Well. Not exactly. Let's start with jewelry: men also wore brooches, rings, and even earrings. Brooches (specifically the Roman fibula) were in fact the normal method of fastening clothing for both genders for centuries. You can make some assumptions based on type, but even that's not foolproof. One problem is that when excavating graves, it used to be fairly common for archaeologists to just note down "fibula" and not add details, and sometimes you can't tell if the extant skeletal remains are male or female. With rings you can (again) make guesses based on the size of the ring, but some men have small hands and some women have large hands. Roman Italian men generally didn't wear earrings, but eastern men (who would have served in the Roman army) did. While jet is associated with women, there are cases of jet jewelry being found on male skeletons. And yet the automatic response of a lot of archaeologists is to see bling and say, "Aha! Women were here!" when in fact it's not that straightforward.
Now, when it comes to textile production tools, you kind of have the opposite problem. Only women span wool, so spindle whorls always mean women, but, at least in the Roman world, there were also male weavers, so loom weights don't always mean women. This is complicated by the fact that most of the instruments of textile production, including the end product, the cloth itself, almost never survive down to the present day because they're perishable. We get loom weights and now and then other bits and pieces. We almost never get a full set of loom weights (about 60-100). This is relevant, because strangely among archaeologists, having enough loom weights to actually count as a full set (about 50+) somehow translates to "male weavers working in a workshop setting producing cloth for commercial purposes" and fewer loom weights means "female weavers working in a domestic setting producing cloth for household purposes," even though what it actually means is just that not all the loom weights survived. This despite the fact we have epigraphic evidence that says that female workers (probably slaves) worked in workshops as well, and also that there's this strange idea of a big difference between domestic and commercial.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. One major thing with loom weights and spindle whorls is where in the Greek or Roman house they're found. With Greek houses, there's this idea of the "women's quarters", as attributed in Xenophon and a bunch of law court speeches. This has led to archaeologists trying to divide up the Greek house into "men's space" and "women's space," with the assumption that this metaphorical wall was never breached. (Which is to say: there is a gendered male space in fancier Greek houses called the andron, the dining room used for male symposia, but it's still difficult to say this was just male. Respectable women didn't attend symposia, but hetaerae (courtesans) and female musicians and dancers (who could also be prostitutes) certainly did. So even that isn't all male.) One reason that trying to divide up the Greek house is difficult is because in quite a few cases, there were actually (at least) two floors, but the second floor never survives, so basically all archaeologists can look at is the ground plan. So some archaeologists just relegate women to the upper stories (there is some textual evidence for this as well, but it's...mixed). But because of the idea of the "women's quarters", there's also the (modern) idea that women must have stayed inside all the time! Therefore: was the courtyard (and many Greek houses did have courtyards) male space or female space? Could it have been, gasp, both? SURELY NOT. Women did their textile production inside, where prying eyes couldn't have seen them! Oh, wait, have we found archaeological evidence of textile production in the courtyard? Where there would have been...light? So women could see what they're weaving? Oh...well, that must just be...a mistake...or have fallen down from the collapsed upper stories...or something. (Say the male archaeologists.)
Now, with Roman houses, you don't have men's and women's space attributed in the sources, and archaeologically you don't either. (Again, many of these houses would have had upper stories: they do not now, even in Pompeii and Herculaneum.) What you do have are loom weights and spindle whorls that are found in the atrium (basically, the big room that you see when you first walk into the Roman house; there is a giant hole in the roof to let in rainwater (the compluvium) which falls into a pool just beneath (the impluvium)), the peristyle (the decorative garden in the back of the Roman atrium house -- this is a problematic term, but I won't get into that), and in small rooms off the peristyle and the atrium (cubicula). Male archaeologists tend to assume that women would have been doing their weaving and spinning in the small dark cubicula, and men would have been doing their weaving in the atrium to sell commercially. Because that makes sense. Female archaeologists (some of whom actually have experience with handcrafting) suggest that extra loom weights and spindles were actually stored in the cubicula, but the work was done in the atrium and the peristyle garden, where there would have been enough light and space to work comfortably. (I generalize, but my "male archaeologists think this and female archaeologists think that" thing is actually borne out by my research, which is a little alarming.
I can go on and on, but I think I might stop now...
no subject
Well. Not exactly. Let's start with jewelry: men also wore brooches, rings, and even earrings. Brooches (specifically the Roman fibula) were in fact the normal method of fastening clothing for both genders for centuries. You can make some assumptions based on type, but even that's not foolproof. One problem is that when excavating graves, it used to be fairly common for archaeologists to just note down "fibula" and not add details, and sometimes you can't tell if the extant skeletal remains are male or female. With rings you can (again) make guesses based on the size of the ring, but some men have small hands and some women have large hands. Roman Italian men generally didn't wear earrings, but eastern men (who would have served in the Roman army) did. While jet is associated with women, there are cases of jet jewelry being found on male skeletons. And yet the automatic response of a lot of archaeologists is to see bling and say, "Aha! Women were here!" when in fact it's not that straightforward.
Now, when it comes to textile production tools, you kind of have the opposite problem. Only women span wool, so spindle whorls always mean women, but, at least in the Roman world, there were also male weavers, so loom weights don't always mean women. This is complicated by the fact that most of the instruments of textile production, including the end product, the cloth itself, almost never survive down to the present day because they're perishable. We get loom weights and now and then other bits and pieces. We almost never get a full set of loom weights (about 60-100). This is relevant, because strangely among archaeologists, having enough loom weights to actually count as a full set (about 50+) somehow translates to "male weavers working in a workshop setting producing cloth for commercial purposes" and fewer loom weights means "female weavers working in a domestic setting producing cloth for household purposes," even though what it actually means is just that not all the loom weights survived. This despite the fact we have epigraphic evidence that says that female workers (probably slaves) worked in workshops as well, and also that there's this strange idea of a big difference between domestic and commercial.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. One major thing with loom weights and spindle whorls is where in the Greek or Roman house they're found. With Greek houses, there's this idea of the "women's quarters", as attributed in Xenophon and a bunch of law court speeches. This has led to archaeologists trying to divide up the Greek house into "men's space" and "women's space," with the assumption that this metaphorical wall was never breached. (Which is to say: there is a gendered male space in fancier Greek houses called the andron, the dining room used for male symposia, but it's still difficult to say this was just male. Respectable women didn't attend symposia, but hetaerae (courtesans) and female musicians and dancers (who could also be prostitutes) certainly did. So even that isn't all male.) One reason that trying to divide up the Greek house is difficult is because in quite a few cases, there were actually (at least) two floors, but the second floor never survives, so basically all archaeologists can look at is the ground plan. So some archaeologists just relegate women to the upper stories (there is some textual evidence for this as well, but it's...mixed). But because of the idea of the "women's quarters", there's also the (modern) idea that women must have stayed inside all the time! Therefore: was the courtyard (and many Greek houses did have courtyards) male space or female space? Could it have been, gasp, both? SURELY NOT. Women did their textile production inside, where prying eyes couldn't have seen them! Oh, wait, have we found archaeological evidence of textile production in the courtyard? Where there would have been...light? So women could see what they're weaving? Oh...well, that must just be...a mistake...or have fallen down from the collapsed upper stories...or something. (Say the male archaeologists.)
Now, with Roman houses, you don't have men's and women's space attributed in the sources, and archaeologically you don't either. (Again, many of these houses would have had upper stories: they do not now, even in Pompeii and Herculaneum.) What you do have are loom weights and spindle whorls that are found in the atrium (basically, the big room that you see when you first walk into the Roman house; there is a giant hole in the roof to let in rainwater (the compluvium) which falls into a pool just beneath (the impluvium)), the peristyle (the decorative garden in the back of the Roman atrium house -- this is a problematic term, but I won't get into that), and in small rooms off the peristyle and the atrium (cubicula). Male archaeologists tend to assume that women would have been doing their weaving and spinning in the small dark cubicula, and men would have been doing their weaving in the atrium to sell commercially. Because that makes sense. Female archaeologists (some of whom actually have experience with handcrafting) suggest that extra loom weights and spindles were actually stored in the cubicula, but the work was done in the atrium and the peristyle garden, where there would have been enough light and space to work comfortably. (I generalize, but my "male archaeologists think this and female archaeologists think that" thing is actually borne out by my research, which is a little alarming.
I can go on and on, but I think I might stop now...