News Virtual Artefact Sessions with Bath Museum 11.11.2021

In Classics lessons over the past fortnight, Year 9 have been taking part in virtual artefact sessions led by experts from the Museum at Bath to support their study of the Roman site of Aquae Sulis.

It was a chance to take a closer look at some of the exciting and unusual finds from over 2000 years ago and ask important questions about them. One of the key artefacts was a skull of a Syrian merchant who had come to Bath bringing with him a cargo of olive oil.  The other artefacts supported bathing practices and included metal ear cleaners, tweezers and strigils (with the revolting revelation that oil and dead skin scraped off at the baths was used by women as a face mask)!  Roman dietary preferences were also looked at and we were treated to a glimpse of a minuscule spoon and pick for eating oysters.  For many of the students, one of the biggest revelations was how archaeologists determined the breed of dog that left its footprints on a clay tile at the baths.