I present in this paper a framework of description for pottery and textile manufacturing in Roman Asia Minor. The research forms part of a wider debate on the specific, but generally underestimated contribution of the production of artisans to the ancient economy. The regulatory factors and production organisation of both crafts are remarkably similar and are placed against the agricultural background of a pre-industrial society.The scholarly debate on the nature of the ancient economy illustrates the limitations of the relevant evidence and the embeddedness of the various approaches and models in contemporary scientific thinking and wider sociological conditions. Recently, the somewhat unfortunate tendency at polarising the debate between the 'Finleys' and the 'Rostovtzeffs' of the academic world (primitivist or modernist, no-trade or long-distance trade, autarky or integrated markets, technological stagnation or development, economic stagnation or growth) has been counteracted by a feeling that we need to take the value of both, not necessarily entirely incompatible, scholarly traditions on board (Saller 2002) and that, most of all, we are pressed by an increasing amount of new data into moving forward. In order to do so, deconstructing the debate has proven most useful, leading John K. Davies to the conclusion that, in fact, even the basic building block of the scientific rationale is still missing. "The entire discourse of ancient economic history" can be characterised by "the lack of a clear and generally accepted answer to the question 'What do we regard as a satisfactory framework for the description, analysis, and interpretation of economic activity in antiquity?' As things are, regrettably, much of what we write comprises 'a discourse in search of a method': much of what we say to each other ends in © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 JESHO 47,4 Also available online -www.brill.nl * Jeroen Poblome, Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, jeroen.poblome@arts.kuleuven.ac.be.