Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Pestle or Sex Toy? The Roman 'Dildo'

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

You may have seen the news that archaeologists have been reassessing a phallic object from Vindolanda Roman Fort in the north of Britain.How does the saying go ... "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." Do you think this counts for d*cks too?Today, Kate is talking to Rob Collins to find out how we can prove what an ancient artefact was actually used for.*WARNING there are adult words and themes in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Joseph KnightBetwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely bit twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here because forewarned is forearmed and you need a fair do's warning. What is a fair do's warning, Kate? Well, it's the warning that I give to let people know that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults

to other adults about adult subjects in an adultery way, and you should also be an adult. And if you're not, go away and put CBBs on immediately. You shouldn't be here. Today we are talking about the history of sex toys, in particular the one that was very recently recategorised at Vindalanda in England. So we will absolutely be talking about mucky things. And you just might not want to listen to that today, in which case, fair dues, you have been warned, this is your chance to get out now. For the rest of you, mucky pups, I'm game if you are.

Okay, betwixters, picture the scene. It's 1992, you an archaeologist. Not like Indiana Jones, a regular archaeologist, and you're digging in the dirt of Northern England. It's almost certainly drizzling. Your hands will be numb and stiff with cold. You might be wearing gloves, but really they don't do very much when you're that far north,

and you'll be brushing objects off with your little archaeologist brush. What is this? What have you found embedded in the dirt before you? It's about six inches long, it's bulbous at one end, and narrows into a kind of, well, there's no other way of saying. A shaft. You have a giggle, because it looks. like a dick, it really does.

But what is this item you've just found? Today, betwixt the archaeological sheets. We are going to try and find out. Why do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fire.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Oh, I'm welcome. Welcome back to Betwixt the Shades, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. A darning tool, part of a statue, a good-look charm, a pestle, or is it a sex toy? Fallic objects aren't rare finds in Roman archaeology. In fact, if you can find something that's not a phallic object, that's considerably rarer. But recently, a couple of archaeologists have been reassessing one particular phallus-shaped article.

Today I am joined by the wonderful Rob Collins to find out why he and his team have reason to believe that the six-incher found Vindolanda Roman Fort might actually have been a dildo. From splinters to wear patterns, we're going to look at all of the evidence. Let's do this. Welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only the man of the hour. It's Rob Collins. How are you? Oh, wonderful. Thank you for having me on. It's such a pleasure. As if I couldn't. That paper.

that you wrote with Rob Sands, we should say, who is not here, you are here to represent him. But your paper on the Vindalandia fallas, I think we could say that that went viral. It did. You know, sex styles, of course. So we anticipated that, you know, something that might be a Dilda would attract attention. I was totally unprepared for just how much attention it received. It went bonkers, didn't it? I don't know what you guys were receiving, but even I was getting, I think I had four or five journalist requests that day for some sex historian to make. some comment on it or something. I was asked to write my own article about it. I read people email. And I didn't even write this paper. So what you have been receiving, I have no idea. It's been a spectrum. I think you can say fairly. I'm sure you've had your own experiences with this, that you get emails from members of the public. You get sometimes actually some really insightful,

very thoughtful emails. And sometimes you get stuff which is purely bonkers. In the thousands, I think it could be fair to say in some cases. Wow. Did you get one from someone who said that they were really horny at the thought of using a dildo for the first time in 2000 years. Was that just me? No, I didn't get that one. That sounds much more exciting. I did receive one. It was very nicely articulated, thoroughly explained of why they thought it was a butt plug. Oh, there was a lot of people on Twitter actually saying that the flared end of it could be a butt plug. Yeah. One of the things is that the photos of the object make it look more pointy than it is in real life. Oh, okay. And of course, different media will kind of distort images slightly. The things,

they stretch them or, you know, and so you could see how different use outlets were kind of slightly distorting the photo to reshape it, or if people just kind of quickly copy and paste, but then it formats weirdly when they post it. You know, so there's times when the image doesn't necessarily fairly represent what the object looked like. No, and we all know there are angles of these things that you can take where they look bigger than they actually are. Yes, yeah. Well, there's a whole art form for that, isn't there? Jill, we're actually getting ahead of ourselves, Rob, but we should start, because there'll be people listening to this who are going, what on earth are they talking about? Tell me about your paper

that you published. What was going on? Okay, well, it starts out is a slightly maybe boring story that my colleague, Rob Sands, who works at University College Dublin. He's also an archaeologist like me, but he is an expert in wood, and not in a metaphorical sense, in a literal sense. His expertise is I'm looking at wooden objects that have been preserved and recovered archaeologically. And so the site, the Roman Fort of Vindalanda, just has these incredible collections. There's lots of organic preservation. So we get things like the Vindelanda writing tablets, which is some sorts of insights. So for example, the earliest form of a woman's handwriting, which is a birthday party invitation. Holy hell. Wow. Yes, the commanding officer's wife,

inviting the wife and family of another commanding officer at a neighboring four to come to a birthday party. And what's great is you can see that she's had a scribe or a secretary write most the letter, but she has signed it herself. It's her own signature. It's a different hand. Vindelan it for anyone who hasn't, who doesn't know it, it's a Roman fort, isn't it? Way up in the north, kind of just before you get to Scotland, that kind of area. It was a Roman fort. Why are things preserved so well there? Britain is a wet country. I think we can generally agree, literally and metaphorically sometimes. But what you get at Vindalanda is we always think that it's kind of a one Roman fort site, but it's a site that's occupied for at least 400 years. I didn't know that. And what happens

is over the course of the Roman period, they build one fort on top of another. So it's actually at least nine different forts that are built on top of each other. And what happens is the weight of human occupation over time, that constant building, demolition, and rebuilding presses the soil. And it squeezes the oxygen out. And so that lack of oxygen in the soil helps organic materials, wood, leather, wax, those sort of things preserve. And it's because of that, that Vindalanda has some great wood and some fantastic leather.

Such a child. The story writes itself. Oh, no. Oh, God. Right. So my colleague Robb, I guess you could say he's wood rob, and I'm Dick Robb.

The weirdest superheroes ever. The superheroes no one really wanted. But he was working out the Vindelanda Archive and working through all the different wooden objects and course checking against entries and things. And he came across this one and said, ah, this is a dick. It was listed in the entry,

just the kind of simple catalog, as a darning tool, something for sewing, for mending socks, gloves, mims, that sort of thing. This was something that interested me. What is a downing tool exactly? Is this something that would be put inside of a Roman sock to help you sew up a hole in it? Is that what a downing tool is? Yeah, I mean, I'm not particularly good at knitting or sewing. I remember someone trying to teach me as a child, and it wasn't for me really. But if you kind of Google Darned Tool, you'll see things that are like mushroom-shaped that tend to have some sort of cap or curvature to it. And I think that helps the heel of a sock if you think about you want that kind of pervature

or the kind of tips of mittens or fingers on a glove. That's my understanding. I'm sure if you'll probably have listeners who need or so who can correct that. Oh, they will. They'll be emailing us in their thousands and we will be very grateful for it as well. Exactly. I'm fully happy to put up my hands in ignorance. But it was down as a darning tool initially. And I can see how that would have happened. When these optics come out of the ground, that anaerobic soil is mucky. It's kind of clingy and muddy. And it smells. As soon as the air hits it, things start decomposing. What does it smell like? Like rotting.

Oh. And so you just get that smell and taste of things rotting. And so when they excavate, they have to be very fast about these sort of things, that anything organic that comes up, they need to kind of keep moist so they don't dry out because that will also help them degrade faster. And then ideally try to get them into conservation very quickly. And so when you're digging in the trenches, you know, you find something, you put it in a little tray to the side. And you write literally on a piece of paper in your muddy hands.

found this, and it's just usually an initial identification. You don't always have time to clean it or to be thorough. I suspect it was one of those just initial, what we'd call a trench side ID, that someone saw it's wood, they saw a curved end, the old possible darting tool, and just put that down because you need to put something down to identify. So huge is the archive that Vindalonda, that, you know, has taken this many years since it was first discovered in 1992 to really get a good examination. And it was that when my colleague Rolfo saw it and said, yeah, this is not like a typical darning tool. It's not for socks.

Yeah. I mean, suppose you could keep it in a sock if you wanted. I'm not sure if they had bedside table drawers in quite the same way that we might today. Did the Romans even have socks? They did. Oh, they did. Right. Okay.

Yeah, there's a bit of a trope stereotype of the socks and sandals thing that Romans would do. Let's give it some description. How big are we talking? What's it made of? What does it look like? Paint us a picture. Okay. Well, what do your list of us prefer?

Metric or imperial? Do they want inches or centimeters? Oh, give us both. Okay. It's about 16 centimeters or six and a half inches. And what you have to imagine is about a third of that is what we would call the base. It's cylindrical in shape and it has a domed end that fits quite nicely into the palm of your hand, one might say. The more important, possibly, two thirds of it, is the dick shape itself.

And it's a slightly tapering shaft that tapers a little bit more sharply as you approach the tip. And then the glands the tip itself is dependent. depicted with a really simple carved line into the wood, which is effectively a sea shape. So it's not fully around wood, but it does clearly denote the tip from the shaft. I mean, it is quite an intricate bell-end shape, isn't it? There's no ambiguity. No. It's clearly a cock.

Yeah. You can't get around that. What is important as well, I think, in this, and something that has generated discussion amongst both peers and colleagues and random strangers who have contacted me, is, of course, the choice of material. It's carved in wood. It not only is a wood, it's ash wood. Ash is a hardwood.

It's dense. It's often used for the handles of tools. It's got a lot of strength to it. It's good for axes and shawls and things like that. This, however, is young ash, which means it's likely to be a little bit more screey and flexible. Not like a willow would be, but it's not like you're taking the handle of an axe either.

It's not a matured, fully hardened ash. It's probably a branch as well. because the base, which is the thickest part of it, mostly just seems to have the outer bark removed. So it's carved from a young branch from an ash tree, which is natives to this part of Britain, to the region around Vindelada. So it's local wood.

And we think it was also carved shortly after it was caught. Was it carved well? I mean, I have never attempted to carve my own sex toys, but, like, objectively, is this someone just whittling a dick? Is it a good piece of craftsmanship? I don't think we could call it Mastercraft would work. But it's certainly content. The person you carve it is someone who's used to carving things in wood.

So then they're not necessarily a master worker by any means, but they're used to someone who's thinking in three dimensions in executing that in motion. What we can see on the object itself is that it was a single blade that was used to cut it. And we know that because there's something called cut marks. So if you imagine the edge of a knife, there's imperfections in the blade, little nicks and things. And when you carve something with a nick of the blade, it leaves a little distinctive mark on the object. to carve. And there are a couple places on the cock that we can see that. We can see those

imperfections on the knife blade. So we know it's carved with a knife or a small blade that had a nick in the edge. And because you can see that in a couple different locations, we can be confident that it's the same tool and by extension, the same person who carved the whole thing. What we have to acknowledge is it's not a master carpenter, master woodworker, but someone who knew what they were doing, a hobby whittler at the very least. So here is the million dollar question. So anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Roman culture knows that this is a group of people who quite like cocks in their daycard. Like if you've been to Pompeii, there are dicks all over the floor, they're on the walls, they're in frescoes, they're on statues. This isn't a group of people that shied away from this.

So it's finding a penis in a Roman site isn't that unusual. It's amazing, fabulous. But what was it about this dick that made you go, something's different about this? This isn't like the other thousands of Roman penises we turn up. Yeah, exactly. If you're not seeing dicks, then you're not truly seeing Roman culture. They're all over the place in your face. They're often set at eye level

or a trip hazard, you know, on the ground sort of thing. They're all over the place. As are naked women, too. It is phylicentric as a culture, but it's not entirely phallocentric. They just generally like nudity in genitals. They do. They do.

This one, as you say, is exceptional partly because it's wood. Usually they're carved in stone or it might be in ceramic, So you'll get body parts, for example, that are made in ceramic and clay that are used as votives, often at shrines for healing and things. And so sometimes you'll find a penis and testicles that's offered for healing or something. You'll find it with wounds as well. Oh, I didn't know the wounds.

Oh, okay. Yeah, you'll get wounds too. So that's one sort of practice with separate genitals. And you'll also get little miniatures. Always the way. Well, yeah. There's the likeropina, I suppose. But these ones get special.

They have wings and things too. But little pendants that people would carry as good luck charms is protection from evil or misfortune. They're small. They're no more than a few inches, you know, maybe five, six centimeters, like the largest. They can be carved in bone or sometimes in wood, but they're usually cast in metal. And they're decorative, aren't they? Like badges and necklaces and things like that. Yeah, there's something you would wear, a dress accessory, the perfect charm, as it were. You can't wear the thing that you found, can you? Yeah, and that's what makes this a bit exceptional.

It's not in the gigantic beyond life size proportion that you'll get with some sculpture, but it's also not in the small pendant size. It's broadly life size, you know, fits within the human spectrum of life size. And it's also clearly an object in and of itself. But because of where it was found, it was found in a ditch outside the Roman fort, which we think is just part of general rubbish. So it's like thrown out? Yeah, it's just kind of Roman garbage, Roman trash.

As archaeologists, we like to use where something is found, bit of a clue for us to deduce how things are used. But we found it in the bin effectively. Well, I wouldn't discount that, you know, because there's a real issue at the moment with people throwing their dildos out and clogging up waterways and landfill. Because people just chuck it in the bin and don't think of it. And this is a public service announcement, by the way, but you are supposed to dispose of your sex toys properly.

We're supposed to dispose of them as electrical goods where they can be cleaned and dismantled, aren't we? I have visions of the civic recycling center vibrating. Like them just turning or going, I can't believe it. many dolders. But the fact that it was thrown away in the rubbish, I would have thought that might actually help to suggest that it is a sex toy. One of the great things about archaeologists is it kind of encourages you to be a storyteller. But the problem is we also have to remember they are stories. And so where does Bap to end and where does fiction begin? And you can get carried

away with yourself. Absolutely. So it's in the rubbish. That didn't really help us decide what it was. So it came down to looking at the object itself and trying to deuce from the object what clues there were for its use and function. And besides the fact that it stick-shaped with a cylinder base and a rounded end, it came down to kind of what we would call wear marks. The evidence of friction. Yeah, there's good discussions that you have about friction. It's amazing that you actually examined basically the wear and tear and the wear marks on this thing. But like what does that entail as a scientist? That can't be just you looking and go, oh, it's very smooth there.

Like, what's the scientific process to determine that? I mean, that is part of this process. And one of the great things about archaeology is that it's multi-sensory. Like, you know, we do look. It's clearly very visual. But we'll engage the other senses, too, that sometimes if you're trying to do what, say, between different types of metal, just giving it a little ping and seeing how it rings will help you.

In this case, touch was really helpful. When we have materials like metal, really hard materials, actually, there are really good scientific processes that will measure to, like, the micron level, how smooth something is. as far as we're aware, that doesn't exist for wood. We don't have a wood smoothness scale or anything. So we were limited to touch. But as I'm sure, you and your list, there's no, the human finger is extremely sensitive to surface variation. Was it quite obviously worn and smooth in certain areas as well?

Again, this is sort of the distortion that you get with photographs. They never capture as much as you can see with the naked eye. If you look at it in the flesh as aware, if you go to Vindalanda and you look through the display case, you can see it there. You can see there are places which just look smoother. but if you just do the simple finger test, if you run your finger along it in different bits, you can really quickly detect, actually quite a bit of micro variation.

So the whole thing is reasonably smooth. I'm not sure it's been sanded, but it's had enough use that it's not a rough surface. There's not really any rough surface except where there's been a little bit of damage. And that's part of its recovery. It was hit by a shovel or something, I think. So there's a bit of a crack in the head.

It's never good. You know, everyone has commented, splinters. Yes, they have. I've seen those comments as well. And that's fair enough. Absolutely fair enough. But it's not an object

that's going to give you a splinter readily. Though, of course, the places we're talking are much more delicate and sensitive. You can still get wooden sex toy. They just have to be smoothed considerably. And wood can be smoothed considerably. I do appreciate everyone looked at it and went, really?

But people have stuck weirder things inside themselves. Well, that's it. Think about all those stories you get from A&E and ER doctors of what has been removed and this is not one of the most exotic possibilities. No. So the important bit is where the smooth bits are

on the dick effectively. So the question I try to pose to anyone who says, it's clearly a dildo or it's definitely not a dildo, is if you have something that's dick-shaped with a cylindrical base, it's smoothest at the base, the rounded donned end

and along the sides of the cylinder base and also at the tip in particularly one side of the tip in upper shaft. So what sort of dick-shaped object is smoothest at both ends, at least smooth in the middle? Something that has had considerable contact in those areas. Yeah, that's it. The greatest way or the greatest smoothness is going to be from the most contact,

the most friction. And so that's what we were working with. That was our basic deductive process of what sort of functions could this object have had that would explain that. So we have a few probabilities. We're honest, we can't be certain. We'll never be certain. But that's okay. I'll be back with Rob and Lafales after this short break. Airplanes, space suits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships.

Over on the patented podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating stories of history's most impactful inventions and the people who claim these ideas as their own. We uncover exceptional stories behind everyday objects. We managed to put two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. Unpack invention myths. So the prince's widow immediately becomes certain. Thomas Edison stole her husband's invention and her husband disappeared around the same time. Can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison, who at the time is arguably the most famous person in the West.

And look backwards to understand technologies that are still in progress. You know, when people turn around to me and say, oh, why would you want to live forever? Life's rubbish. I just think that's a bit sad. I think it's a worthwhile thing to do. And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. In the paper, you came up with, was it three possibilities that were sort of realistically, it could be one of these three? Yeah.

So one of the things I would also say that archaeology can often be seen as a very sexy job or a very easy job. Like we just kind of look at things and match pictures. There is a bit more to that. The coverage of the Guardian had a response of someone saying, oh, it's a drop spindle, for example, and they gave an example of something from, I think it was the Spanish Highlands in more recent centuries. And so visually, they look a lot alike,

but there's other things that don't necessarily make sense. So one of the things, when we're trying to identify an object, we try to look within that culture, within that time period, what other objects are that are a bit similar or Mike Shulp explain something. So something that you see all over the Roman world are, just as we said earlier, dicks. Statues with dicks.

Just dicks on their own carved. And there's plenty of gods that have proud members, always standing to attention, and they have statues. Now, the statues we usually have are in stone, but we also know statues were carved in wood. So is this, you know, some gods willy, we just don't have the rest of the god.

They ended up in the rubbish bin. Exactly. So that's a possibility, though the examples we have of detachable willies for statues in other places. Detachable willies. Willis for statues? Like they made them to like take off? I think they made them for ease of erection, as it were.

If you think about carving your god, right? If you're carving them out of stone, carving them out of wood, the willies sticking out at an odd angle from the rest of the body. So in some cases, it's easier to carve it as a separate piece. And they would do that in other ways with statues as well. So like arms, for example, would often be carved separately and then attached to reduce the possibility of a breaking during the carving process. It's just a way to do it to make it better, as it were. It's about the erection rather than the use. Okay.

So that's a possibility, but there's also something in the Greek and Roman world called a herm. And these are boundary stones that will typically have a penis carved on them, either in kind of relief, so it's flat, but sticking out a little bit from the surface, or they can be 3D in projecting outwards from it. We don't really have any examples of those from the northern bits of the Roman Empire. So that would also be really interesting. But again, it's that domed end. if that socketed end is sticking in a statue or a firm, then why is that dome end so smooth? Yeah, and it being domed doesn't seem to line up with

if it was a statue that you're going to affix something to. Yeah, and we do have a few other examples of detachable willies. There's some from Egypt, for example. And actually, they've got a metal shank or a pin sticking out of the base. Not only do you have the socket that slots in, but then there's another little pin that clearly locks in even deeper. So it's a possibility, but there is a possibility. but there's reasons we could maybe discount that.

Okay, so we've discounted that on the idea that it's a kind of detachable wheelie. Have we found other penises at Vindalanda? Is this unique on its own? We must have done. This wood one is unique. Absolutely. But we do have another example, Vindalanda, which does suggest that you've got something like a Herm. And this is a rather proud footlong, card in stone, with a nice upward curvature to it, suggesting a ski jump.

And that one was found outside the west gate of the fort. And actually here the difference is really interesting because the base of the footlong is rectangular, box-like carved in stone. And so you can easily see that that's something that would fit in to a socket. And so in that case, the footlawn, you could easily see as being like a herm, that it's projecting out of a stone somewhere around the gate of the fort. And that would be classic Roman use of a big perurrection. You know, it's at a threshold that are crossing at a,

a boundary, a liminal space, so it offers that protection. So it's less and less likely that it was made to go onto a statue. What was you at the thought of what this object could be? The second possibility is that it's a pestle. So I don't know how many people now will use a mortar and pestle. So a pestle is some sort of shaft to grind up. For now, we use it for cooking. But historically, it would be not only cooking, but you'd use it to grind up medicines

or cosmetics to make makeup. Women would make their own eye shadow and blush and everything. And those would be a very common object throughout the ancient world. And so it could easily be that. And that would really nicely explain the very smooth, domed base is something that's repeatedly ground against something else and mixing ingredients. It doesn't have to be anything hard. It could just be, you know, herbs or something that's not going to be scratchy, which

would also mean the end is nice and smooth. The question there is that imagine you're grinding up some azalees or something for a salad. How would you hold that pestle in your hand? Yeah, I'd hold it, I guess, at the top, right? And press down. Yeah. Yeah. Is it an overhand grip? Or is it do you underhand grip it as well? I think it probably is that overhand? I'm holding up my fist like that. I think I would say that's overhand.

Thumb up. Yeah, thumb up. Thinking underhand being thumb down. Yeah, I think I'd overhand. But in either case, you're mostly gripping it in the shaft area. So that doesn't necessarily explain the greater wear at the tip and along the side of the tip. Unless maybe your thumb is up, there's a bit more pressure there when you hold it. It's a mystery.

Okay. And also, if I remember the paper correct, It doesn't have food staining on it. Is that right? Yeah. We looked for any example of kind of staining discoloration, which you'll see with a modern wood pestle. But that said, it depends on what you're grinding, I suppose, if it leaves any stains. That's very, very true. So what was the moment when you and Rob went, we think that this could be a sex toy? I mean, apart from just looking at it. I think it might be fair to say that my colleague Rob would rob is more mature than Dick Robb. And I may have very quickly said, you know, this could be a dildo.

And it's one of the things that best explains the wear, the friction, what areas have been most used. The other thing is that in handling the object, you know, we're very lucky that we could handle the object directly. The domed end fits very comfortably into the palm of your hand. And there is a way to hold it in which your fingers then also clasp around the cylindrical base, which has a very natural feel to it. Now, on the basis that that could just be my own bias or my own man-sized hands or just juvenile tendencies, in the name of proper science, I asked other people, including women that were there at the museum at the time when I was looking at the object, to also just hold the object. The question I put to them is hold it and how do you find it most comfortable to hold it? So one is to hold it in the shaft, but the other was to hold it like that. So it almost becomes like a pointer.

Yeah. is it a word. And if you hold it that way, I think mechanically, it would work quite nicely as a sex toy. Yeah. It would be very naive of us to think that the Romans didn't have sex toys of plenty and that every age throughout history has had sex toys of plenty. We just struggle to find them. We know from women art. We know from Roman literature. They have them. There's all sorts of humor in that Roman literature. Yeah, like jokes about making them out of bread was one of them. Yes. There's a whole exchange between women in a village about, look what the shoemaker made for me. And the implication being that it's made in leather, there's pun

in satire and wordplay in the poem. And it's, who aren't you lucky? And I wonder if he'll make me one. And it's just being women laughing. Yeah. And looking through historical pornography, when dildos do pop up and they do quite frequently, they're often made a leather. Like right up to the 19th century, there's descriptions of dildos and toys being made full of lamb skin and then stuffed to make them hard again. Yeah. And so actually, this is like to a discussion with the leather experts that work on the collection of Vindalanda. God, to be around that table, go on. What are they saying?

Well, I mean, first off, Vindalanda has like 7,000 plus shoes, including high-end designer shoes at the Roman era. And there's bits of ten fragments, because of course, lots of soldiers and things. But it was that suggestion, you know, these are made of leather. What might leather off-cuts, the bits of leather left over, that do get thrown out regularly? What would leather off-cuts from a dilt-cote?

So the challenge has been raised in, discussed of is there evidence for a leather dildo that we've just missed because we've not really considered. It could just be in some museum somewhere listed as a shoe or... Well, I think we know a shoe from a dildo. One hoax. No one's going to make that mistake. And given when you start looking for ticks, you see them everywhere.

I don't know if you've ever had that problem. Yeah, absolutely. And so the problem is when you're dealing with anything like this with sex history, is you're always going to be so careful about are you bringing your own modern viewpoints to things? Is this how a Roman would have seen this? And ultimately we don't know. We're not Romans. If you had a Roman and you walked them around a museum and showed them all of the things, they would probably fall about laughing. Absolutely. I'm certain of it. So we have to be careful, as you say about projecting our own, you know, wants, desires and expectations. But there should be more of these out there. I think it's telling of us as a society that we have yet to positively identify a Roman Dildo. That's true. I mean, considering how many penises go about in this culture, that this could be.

the first, is this the first one that someone's throwing their hat in the ring and gone? I think it's a Roman Dildo. As far as we're aware, it's the first potential Roman Dildo. What's interesting, though, is it's not the oldest Dildo by any means. We have objects that are older that we feel reasonably confident are Dildos. But it's really difficult. This is such a difficult area of research, isn't this? Because at least with the Vindalanda Fellis that you've examined, like, there's evidence of where and there's smoothness, and there's the size and the base and the grip and where it was found, But when you go back further and we're talking about like Stone Age fallacies, I think one of the oldest ones was 28,000 years old that was found in Germany, we don't have that stuff. So you're just looking at it going, it looks like a penis. And that's kind of as much as anyone can't, because we've no idea what they were doing with it. Absolutely. And it's not just the penis, but also the vulva. They're biological, of course, but they have a symbolic meaning in almost every culture. So there's always that question between biological or physical.

functional usage and symbolic meaning. And it's the less we know about a society, the harder it is to distinguish when something is there for pleasure and when it's there for religion. But we do have objects from throughout history that we know that it's really not up for debate whether or not this was a sex toy. That was a sex toy. There's one in the science museum, I think, that was found, stuffed in an armchair, used to be in a nunnery from the 18th century. I love that example. And the whole fact that it's got a plunger to simulate ejaculation.

It has a plunger. That's dedication to craft. I think a man made that. You do get descriptions of dildos around that time and they do talk about them having a plunger. I've always read that and just thought, surely the best thing about a dildo is that you don't have to do that bit. There's no mess.

Why would you complicate them? Anyway, anyway. But that's what we made about our modern viewpoints. It obviously made sense to somebody. Is that ivory that one? That one's ivory, but I'm glad you brought that one up because actually that's a really good example of where, just from the photographs that you can see on the museum website,

you can see the difference in where, and in this case, discoloration. That might suggest a level of usage that didn't apply to our object because ivory is an even harder substance than ash. And that's sort of another argument that, well, people were using this stuff. There's been other ones found carved from mahogany and bits of wood And certainly in the Welcome Trust, there's ones, I think it's like early 20th century, but it's tortoiseshell sex toys. Yes. And the other thing I think we have to bear in mind, it's really easy for us to be judgy when we have all sorts of modern materials and technology. We make up new materials, synthetic, completely humid or creative materials that didn't exist in nature for all of human history. Some of these materials are less than 20 years old. And we put them into sex toys within like a year or two of discovery because they're waterproof. and they wear very well.

The sex industry is always on the cutting edge of technology. Isn't it? And I think there has actually been research around that that shows that sex and the application of technology to sex somehow will almost guarantee that something will be invented, go ahead, be put to that particular use. Yeah, it's usually war or violence in sex are the two most rapid technology industry adopters.

I dread to think how many emails you got about this. Most of the ones that I got were people giving alternative suggestions as to what they thought it was. Is that what you got? Yes, I did. And I think actually that in itself is really interesting. There was more resistance to the thought of it being a dildo than there was joyful glee of, it's a dildo. And I expected it to go the other way. Isn't that interesting?

I thought I'd have to talk to the press and say, look, we think it might be a dildo, but we can't be sure. To be fair, the press was really good at saying they aren't sure. It's just a possibility. But it was the resistance to, ooh, it could be all sorts of other things. What were they suggesting to you? I think there are some genuinely very interesting and very good suggestions. So I was contacted by a Mason by a stone carver who said, this is just a simple Mason's hammer.

And I knew exactly what he meant because it's a tool I'm familiar with. And in this case, I said, I don't disagree, but I'm not sure that the wear would match up in terms of what we'd expect. But there was a good dialogue there. And this was clearly a master craft person who knows their tools and could recognize it. Someone that suggested a leather working tool, which I'd not come across before. which actually does have a rounded end like that and a more wedge-shaped end for kind of creasing or rounding out leather as you would form it and let it harden. And so that's an interesting possibility. Again, I'm not sure it entirely applies to this object, but it's not something that you

could discard. The other thing, of course, is humans being infinitely ingenious. Who's to say it ever had one function? I mean, did it start as a pestle for grinding up stuff? And you could see in Roman culture, a pestle, someone grinding up for food and carving a dick into it to bring that magical symbolism to their cooking or medicine. Everything can be a sex toy if you've got the right attitude, can it? It wouldn't be beyond the realms of these people to make a downing tool that looks like a penis. Yeah. And so there's always that ambiguity as well.

And think today, how many screwdrivers are not used to screwdrivers but are used to pry open a lid of paint? Future archaeologists will be looking at this screwdriver saying it's a screwdriver, but there's bits of paint on it. And you'll think, well, is it really a screwdriver if it's only ever been used to pry open pink tins? I think the most amazing thing about this paper is you've convinced me, I think it's a sex toy, because it all lines up and why wouldn't it be? Like, of course these people had sex toys, and we're bound to find one sooner or later. And I think that if it got people talking about it, certainly got people talking. And I think that was a really valuable part of the paper.

I think the other thing, too, is in trying to research how we might better determine if it's a sex toy, actually has opened my eyes from an archaeological perspective some of the gaps in our own modern research around sex. One of those is we come back to those wear patterns. So what I was able to find was good modern research, and this was done in America, of different demographics, orientations, age groups, different class stuff that the way people use sex implements just varies. And that shouldn't really be a surprise to us. But even amongst straight women, like age was a major factor.

So younger women were more prone for clitoral stimulation, whereas older women tends to be focused on vaginal penetration. So if you think about the active stimulation itself and what object might be used, it's an archaeologist. It's not just what it is, but it's how it was used. And so what I couldn't find in any research was evidence of how different groups use those. In the evidence on the objects themselves, it was all based on modern survey data, of course, what people say, whereas the objects don't lie as much. You know, you might say you use something a certain way, but actually you look at it and you think, no, they're not. I think as well that we are now starting to unpick a lot of

It's actually such a fascinating subject historically because we're always unpacking our own panic around it and anxiety and prejudice. And especially the Victorians did a proper number on a lot of things that they excavated from the Roman. They were the ones just going, it's definitely not a penis. I think it's a doorstop because that was their own thing. And now we're kind of in the process of going back. And you just sometimes think about all the stuff that must have been lost or thrown out or destroyed because people were embarrassed about it. Yeah. This is a challenge we have.

but it's a fascinating challenge. But I would appeal to modern scholars of sex. Think materially as well. How would you know if you're from a society that doesn't have nipple clamps, what a nipple clamp is? There's all these kind of questions that if you're like Madonna and your material girl, if you think that way, how do you know these things?

How would we deduce these things? Are you done with the dildo now, Rob? Are you going to go back and do more research on this? I'm not sure how much more research we could do with this one. What my hope is, though, is that it starts a conversation And the going viral will help with that. But to prompt curators in museums around the world to think, actually, you know, I have something that might be similar to that in my collection. Or if a fresh example is discovered that before it goes to conservation, we can do some of the zippy science stuff that we do.

So one of the things we couldn't test for on this object is looking for biochemical traces, you know, secretions, ancient DNA from someone's ass or vagina or something like that. Fine. We couldn't do that because of the conservation process. It's kind of effectively a liquid plastic that gets fully absorbed into the cells of the wood. Otherwise, it would have fallen apart. So it just wasn't feasible. But if a new object is discovered like this, then maybe there's that opportunity for us to use our Zippy modern science to work that out. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Rob, you have just been incredible to talk to today. You've been an absolute treat. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? I would say just simply use the tools available on Google. Google Rob Collins archaeologist, you'll find my staff page, my FADDU page. It's not all dicks all the time. My main focus actually is Hadrian's Wall or Hadrian's Monumental Erection. And the paper itself is open access, isn't it? So people can go and read this for themselves. It is. Yeah, absolutely. And that was really important to us. We knew it would capture imagination and everyone should be able to see this thing.

Can they go and see it? If they go to Vindalanda, can they see the phallis? Absolutely, yeah. It's on display in the museum, along with a range of other phallic objects. Road trip. I'm going to go and do that. Oh, Rob, thank you so much for joining me today. You've been so much fun. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening. I thank you so much to Rob for taking the time to talk to me about this today. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed myself.

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