Thursday 6th June 2013 Blog
Day 7- Roman Vanity Kit
One of the larger house platforms became one again the area for star finds, for example see day 6 for yellow patterned high status glass. Today, BSc Archaeology students Dominique Hopton and Afifa Khan recovered a completely intact pair of Roman tweezers, as pictured below.
Intact Roman tweezers recovered by Dominique Hopton and Afifa Khan, courtesy of Bournemouth University.
At other Roman sites across Britain, it has been observed that often certain finds associated with hygiene or vanity are usually found together. In this case, it is usual that Roman tweezers, an ear scoop and a nail manicure pick are found together. Not long after the tweezers were recovered, a broken ear scoop was also recovered from the same feature and context, as pictured below.
Roman tweezers and broken possible ear scoop recovered by students Dominique Hopton and Afifa Khan, courtesy of Bournemouth University.
Very late in the day, an extremely interesting find was recovered in a flint-lined feature below the Roman “villa”. The find is called a strigil, which is an artefact associated with Roman bathing. After bathing, oil was applied to the skin and the strigil was used to scrape the oil off the skin. This is suggestive evidence that there were Roman baths either on site or near enough for the site population to visit.
Reconstruction for the use of a strigil, thanks to Catie Watts and Zoe Barras for their contribution! Courtesy of Bournemouth University.