Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern ...

indicate that the palatial range of control was extensive. 272 Tzachili notes that the
majority of loom weights and spindle-whorls are found outside palatial centers and often
at ports. 273 The textual records convey that this work was completed entirely by women
and children. The Pylian tablets distinguish women working within the immediate
vicinity (Hither province) from those in the Further province. Likewise, the Knossos
tablets mention the regions where women worked, leading Nosch to conclude that “all
dependent women are assigned to textile occupations and work in their home villages.” 274
Whether women worked specifically within the palatial grounds is uncertain, but they
seem, according to the tablets, to be dependent on the palace. If textile production
occurred in village settings, the female workers still would have been in contact with the
urban centers, not least for the acquisition of raw materials as well as for payments of
their work. Several tablets from Pylos in fact mention the payment of staple goods to
women and children for their work with textiles. 275 If palaces managed the raw materials
as well as the payment for services, perhaps these large sites also oversaw the distribution
of the crafting tools. The primary distribution of small craft implements in large
settlements denotes that some of the minor crafting operations, like textile working,
occurred at these centers. Textile production, at least in the LBA Aegean, was controlled
by the palace, yet textile work must have taken place within and outside the palatial
grounds. 276
Despite the possible overlap in function among some tool forms, small craft
implements were divided into the following types: double spatulas, awls, pointed objects,
272 Smith 1993.
273 Tzachili 2001a, 172.
274 Nosch 2003, 21.
275 Nakassis 2010, 134-135.
276 Burke 2010.
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