Remember that ancient Roman “dildo”? It might just be an old Roman drop spindle

Odds are good you read at least one of the umpteen media stories last month about a possible 2,000-year-old "dildo" unearthed near the remains of a Roman auxiliary fort in the UK called Vindolanda. Well, it's either a dildo; a pestle used for grinding cooking, cosmetic, or medicinal ingredients; or something meant to be inserted into a statue and rubbed for good fortune (a common Roman practice). That's what the authors of a February paper in Antiquity concluded, anyway. But now we have another possible explanation to consider: The phallus-shaped artifact might be a drop spindle used for spinning yarn. As we've reported previously, the Vindolanda site is located south of the defense fortification known as Hadrian's Wall. An antiquarian named William Camden recorded the existence of the ruins in a 1586 treatise. Over the next 200 years, many people visited the site, discovering a military bathhouse in 1702 and an altar in 1715. The Rev. Anthony Hedley began excavating the site in 1814, but he died before he could record what he found for posterity. Another altar found in 1914 confirmed that the fort had been called Vindolanda. Serious archaeological excavation at the site began in the 1930s under the leadership of Eric Birley, whose sons and grandson continued the work after his death, right up to the present day. The oxygen-deprived conditions of the deposits (some of which extend 6 meters, or 19 feet, into the earth) mean that the recovered artifacts are remarkably well-preserved. These include wooden writing tablets and over 100 boxwood combs, which would have disintegrated long ago in more oxygen-rich conditions. The site is most famous for the so-called Vindolanda tablets, among the oldest surviving handwritten documents in the UK. Discovered in 1973, these are thin wooden leaves, about the size of a postcard, with text written in carbon-based ink. Most of the documents are official military communications and personal messages from garrisoned soldiers to their families, revealing many details about life at the fort. By far the most famous is Tablet 291, written around 100 CE by the wife of a commander named Claudia Severa, who was in charge of a nearby fort. It was addressed to Sulpicia Lepidina, inviting her to a birthday party, and represents one of the earliest known examples of a woman writing in Latin. Phalluses were everywhere in ancient Rome because they were believed to ward off evil. The Vindolanda site alone has 13 phallic carvings, more than have been discovered at any other dig site along Hadrian's Wall. For instance, last year, archaeologists excavating at Vindolanda discovered a small stone carved with the unmistakable image of a penis—basically an ancient Roman d**k pic, accompanied by a crude insulting message. Experts in Roman epigraphy recognized the lettering as a mangled version of Secundinus cacator, which translates into “Secundinus, the shitter." The penis image merely added insult to injury—a clever subversion of the traditional interpretation of a phallus as a positive symbol of fertility.

The artifact identified last month as a possible dildo was originally unearthed in 1992 from a ditch, surrounded by dozens of shoes and bits of waste leather and worked antler. It was labeled a darning tool and promptly relegated to the archives of the Vindolanda museum. Decades later, Rob Sands, an archaeologist at University College Dublin and co-author of the Antiquity paper, happened upon the artifact while researching the various wooden objects found at the site. It looked so much like a phallus that he questioned whether it had been properly identified. Sands and fellow archaeologist Rob Collins of Newcastle University decided a re-assessment of the artifact was warranted. The phallus-shaped artifact is carved from ash wood and is about 16 cm long—life-sized, unlike the usual small mini-phalluses found at Roman digs. Since wood is prone to (ahem) shrinkage and warping over centuries, it was probably a bit larger when it was first made. It's not unthinkable that it might have been used as a dildo. Jane Draycott, a classicist at Glasgow University, pointed out in an article for The Conversation that the Greek historian Herodotus told a story about two women discussing one's acquisition of a scarlet leather dildo, referring her friend to a local shoemaker so she could get one of her own. Draycott studies ancient prosthetics and suggested the Vindolanda phallus might have been made by a Roman shoemaker with a naughty side hustle.

Linsey Duncan-Pitt of Shropshire, UK, was among the millions of people around the world who read about the Roman dildo. But as a self-proclaimed avid yarn-spinner, she didn't buy the sex toy explanation. She wrote to the Guardian and suggested it looked more like a Scottish dealgan or farsadh—in other words, a drop spindle. (You can buy modern versions on Etsy.) Per Duncan-Pitt:

The tip looks a little glans-like, but it is also like the notch at the pointed end of the dealgan, used to secure the spun fibre with a half-hitch. The spindle is then rotated to add twist to the drafted fibres, and the spun fibre is wound around the shaft. The base of the artefact is wider than the tapering shaft; that would help stop the fibre slipping off. Some dealgans have a notch on the base, but not all. Given that it was found among other crafting materials, this would seem to be a much more feasible explanation for this object than a dildo. It’s a bit understated as a dildo, and would no doubt make for a more satisfying spin than anything else. Modern spinners like me love a decorative and unusual spindle, and so it seems more logical that this was a cheeky Roman design.

A phallus-shaped novelty drop spindle seems as likely an explanation as a dildo, a pestle, or a good luck charm, given the Roman penchant for salacious art, literature, and humor. Let the debate continue. DOI: Antiquity, 2023. 10.15184/aqy.2023.11  (About DOIs).