Source| Research Circle (ID:keyanquan)
Compiled | Wu Dake
The next time you see an ancient Roman pottery that looks like a flowerpot, don't put your nose up and smell it!
Image credit: riNux/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
The advent of pottery has completely changed the way of life of ancient humans, and pottery and pottery fragments often found in archaeology have re-revealed the world thousands of years ago to the world. In the eyes of archaeologists, in addition to the pottery itself, the substances attached to the surface of the pottery often hint at clues about the lives of the ancients, the most widely known of which is the information about the diet of the ancients. Because the fat in meat or dairy products and the waxy surface of some plants easily penetrate the inner wall of the ceramic container during the stewing process, the container used for cooking and holding food has become the entry point for research. However, the substance hidden in the pottery is far more than just food residues.
In a Feb. 11 paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom reported on a jar found in an ancient Roman country house called Gerace in Sicily, Italy. This study also provides us with a lot of information about the diet and health of the ancient Romans, but this clay pot, which dates back to the 5th century AD, is not a cooker or eating utensil of the ancient Romans, and the substance attached to it is not food residue, but the feces of the ancients.
A potty potty unearthed in a Roman country house in Gerace, 5th century AD, Sicily, Italy.
Image credit: Roger Wilson
The Gerace clay pot was inverted conical, 31.8 cm high and 34 cm in diameter, which at first glance resembled a pot today. Roger Wilson, a professor of classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, notes that clay pots of similar shapes were very common in ancient Rome and may indeed have been used as flower pots, but there are many other possibilities. Previously, researchers did not have clues to their specific uses, but had to think that they were storage tanks. However, many of these jars have been found in or next to public toilets, suggesting that some of these jars may have also been used as potties by the ancients. So far, none of the excavated clay pots have provided conclusive evidence for this speculation. Researchers are even less able to tell which are flower pots, which are food utensils, and which are potty pots.
The Gerace clay pot brings a new clue: its inner surface is attached to a hard substance that envelops something the researchers never noticed — the researchers at the University of Cambridge's Ancient Parasite Laboratory used microscopy to identify the eggs of the intestinal parasite Trichuris trichiura, indicating that the clay pot was once used to hold human feces. Tianyi Wang, co-author of the study, said: "It's unbelievable that the eggs of these parasites were finally discovered after 1500 years. ”
Whipworm is a human parasite that is about 5 cm long and lives on the lining of the intestine. The eggs they lay mix with human feces and enter the potty. During repeated use of the potty, minerals in the urine and feces are mineralized and consolidated on the inner surface layer by layer, and whipworm eggs are also wrapped in it. Co-author of the study, Sophie Rabinow of the Cambridge team, said, "Parasitic eggs are trapped in layers of minerals on the surface of the container, which is why they have been well preserved for centuries. ”
It was the first time scientists had found parasitic eggs from minerals consolidated on the surface of ancient Roman ceramic vessels, which led them to confirm that the clay pot from Gerace was used to hold human feces.
As mentioned above, clay pots are one of the most common forms of artifacts in the archaeology of Roman sites, most of which are used to hold food and produce living materials and other items, although there are some records of other uses of clay pots, but researchers have not had a good way to determine the specific use of a clay pot. The discovery provides an effective way for researchers to accurately distinguish most of the containers used as potty through parasite analysis.
It seems that this technique only works if the potty user is infected with a parasite, and there may be many potties that do not contain parasite eggs, rendering them ineffective. But Rabinow notes that such concerns are unnecessary.
Double toilets in ancient Rome. Such toilets even became social places at the time.
Image credit: Le plombier du désert, CC BY-SA 4.0
According to the researchers' estimates, the proportion of ancient Roman infections with intestinal parasites was high. Although ancient Roman cities already had relatively complete sanitation facilities, such as public toilets and water and sewerage pipes, these facilities could not reach the countryside, and the habits of urban residents such as toilets still had great health problems from today's point of view, which made diseases still rampant. For example, according to previous studies of ancient Roman toilets, public toilets provided a stick-shaped sponge called tersorium to facilitate the ancient Romans to clean themselves after defecation, and this sponge was shared by all those who used the toilet and was simply washed with salt or vinegar before use. Some ancient Romans even used toilets as social places, which led to the widespread spread of fecal-transmitted diseases.
In today's parasite-endemic areas, such as some developing countries, more than half of the population is infected with at least one or more intestinal parasites, which was higher in ancient Rome. With this in mind, researchers should be able to find eggs laid by intestinal parasites from ancient Roman pottery, which is mostly used as potty. That said, using this parasite analysis method should be able to distinguish most ancient toilets.
Piers Mitchell, the lab expert who led the study, notes that the jar was unearthed from the bathroom of a Gerace country house. Perhaps because the bathroom did not have a toilet, the people who bathed here did not want to run out of the bathroom to go to the toilet naked on a cold winter day, so they had to use a potty to go to the toilet.
After all, for them, "convenience" is the most important thing.
Primary source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942611
bibliography
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome
[2]https://www.livescience.com/roman-empire-port-o-potty
[3]https://knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2021/what-did-ancient-people-eat
Thesis information
【标题】Using parasite analysis to identify ancient chamber pots: An example of the fifth century CE from Gerace, Sicily, Italy
【作者】Sophie Rabinow, Tianyi Wang, Roger J.A. Wilson, Piers D.Mitchell
【期刊】Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Date: 11 February 2022
【DOI】10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103349
【摘要】Chamber pots are perhaps one of the more challenging ceramic forms to identify with certainty in Roman pottery studies, despite the availability of detailed ceramic typologies. Here, we describe the analysis of mineralized concretions taken from a Sicilian ceramic vessel of the fifth-century CE, and propose paleoparasitology, the identification of intestinal parasites, as a helpful method for contributing to the detection of chamber pots. Microscope analysis of the mineralized concretions revealed the presence of eggs of the intestinal nematode Trichuris trichiura (whipworm), confirming that the vessel originally contained faeces. This is the first time that parasite eggs have been identified from concretions inside a Roman ceramic vessel. Systematic parasitological investigation of calcified deposits from ceramic vessels may therefore help to establish function. In addition, the identification of intestinal parasite eggs has the potential to advance our understanding of the sanitation, diet, and intestinal health of populations who used these chamber pots.
【Link】
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X22000128