For a long time, the conical clay vessels discovered in many Roman sites were considered storage containers. Now, residues in such vessels from Late Antique Sicily reveal that they were instead “mobile” toilets: the vessels contained preserved eggs of common intestinal parasites that could only have entered these residues with the feces. The clay containers served as a kind of toilet bowl.
Before there were toilets, people of many cultures used communal latrines – this was also the case in Roman times. Only over time were these communal toilets replaced by more individual options. According to tradition, there were portable urinals in the form of amphorae as early as ancient Greece, and from the Middle Ages at the latest, a toilet chair was also common in higher circles – a chair with a chamber pot embedded in the seat. However, archaeological finds from Roman times have so far only brought to light latrines – at least that’s what was thought.
What were the conical vessels used for?
But now a study by Sophie Rabinow from the University of Cambridge and her colleagues sheds a whole new light on the toilet habits of the Romans. For their study, they analyzed the residues in a type of clay pot that was very common in Roman times. These are pots that are a good 30 centimeters high and widen conically towards the top. “Such conical vessels were found almost everywhere in the Roman Empire and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, were usually classified as storage vessels,” explains co-author Roger Wilson of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
However, the fact that many of these clay pots were found near Roman latrines had earlier raised suspicions that they might represent some kind of chamber pot. “So far, however, there has been no proof of this,” says Wilson. So he and his colleagues have now examined the crusty residues in some such pots, which date back to the fifth century and were found in a Roman villa in Gerace, Sicily. Because urine and faeces are often difficult to detect via such crystalline residues, the team chose a different approach: They looked for traces of intestinal parasites that could have gotten into these residues with the faeces.
Intestinal parasite eggs in pot residue
In fact, the scientists found what they were looking for: in the hard crusts they were able to identify several eggs of the whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) – a roundworm that is one of the most common intestinal parasites in humans. These worms, which are up to five centimeters long, attach themselves to the intestinal wall and feed on the intestinal mucosa. Their eggs are released into the intestine and are excreted in the feces. “These eggs got caught between the mineral crusts that formed on the walls of the clay pots and were thus preserved for centuries,” reports Rabinow. It is the first evidence of such parasite eggs from a Roman pottery vessel.
The discovery of these parasite eggs proves that the clay pots were not used as storage containers, as was long assumed, but were probably the Roman equivalent of a chamber pot. The Roman residents of the villa in Gerace used the pots as portable toilets. The archaeologists suspect that these pots were placed under a stool or similar wooden frame to give people more comfort when having a bowel movement. “The pot comes from the bath complex of the Roman villa. It is therefore likely that visitors to the bath used this chamber pot because the bath did not have its own latrine,” explains Rabinow’s colleague Piers Mitchell.
The investigation reveals that the Romans were already using chamber pots. In addition, this suggests that the conical vessels supposedly serving as storage pots may also have served as portable toilets elsewhere in the Roman Empire. A search for parasite eggs in the residues of these other pots could now show whether this was really the case. “Our results show that the analysis of parasites can provide important information for the study of ancient ceramics,” says Rabinow.
Source: University of Cambridge; Specialist article: Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, doi: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103349