Cameo corner: Roman oils and perfumes

For this programme Sally Pointer worked on making Roman oils and perfumes. Unfortunately, the Roman bathhouse that the team had expected to excavate turned out to be nothing of the sort. This meant that the reconstruction cameo didn't make the final cut of the programme – but you can still find out about it here.

What was your experience in Roman perfumes and oils before doing Time Team?
I've spent several years researching the topic and particularly exploring ways to make plausible reconstructions of historical beauty products. I'd previously explored Roman perfume and incense in a Time Team cameo [South Perrott in the 2005 series] and am also the author of a book on the history of perfumes and cosmetics [The Artifice of Beauty: A history and practical guide to perfumes and cosmetics, Sutton Publishing, 2005].'

What was the aim of the cameo?
I've always felt that a good experiment should raise as many questions as it answers. So I was hoping that, as well as demonstrating that the various preparations we were trying out worked, we'd find areas that needed further research and questioning. It was also meant to be fun. People have always seen the humorous side of bathing practice and the Romans were no exception. We have documentary records of the various things that went on at the bath house, and we wanted to see if there was some truth behind all the reports of splashings and screaming!

What materials did you use?
We looked at cleaning with oils that had been scented with herbs believed to promote health, and also at ways to remove unwanted body hair. This involved a potentially dangerous mixture of molten pine resin and beeswax, as well as an array of tweezers, strigils and coarse towels.

How did you make the oils?
We chose a base of olive oil and two plants that would have been familiar to the Romans in Britain, coriander and rosemary. These were also used in cooking and were thought to help promote a strong body and healthy mind. We had to grind these in mortaria and then heat them in the oil to yield a thick, strongly scented oil.

What was the hardest part of the task?
Getting the depilatory wax right. Whilst beeswax has a low melting point, pine resin doesn't, and the effective working temperature of the wax was very close to the point where our 'volunteer' might have been scalded. I was very worried about doing the poor man an injury on camera!

Did you learn anything by doing the reconstruction?
Even a fairly basic bathing routine using Roman methods took quite a bit of time. It takes a while to work the oil properly into the skin, then you have to strigil it off very carefully or the skin remains greasy. If you then apply treatments such as plucking, waxing or massage, a trip to the baths really could take a couple of hours at least.

If you did it again would you have done it differently?
It would have been great to have had a proper pool to allow for all the oils to be washed off, with a warm room for the sauna aspect of many Roman baths to be used. This would have altered the way the oils worked on the skin and it would have been interesting to see how clean people felt afterwards. It's very like Turkish baths are today, but using Roman potions and implements would have allowed some real experimentation with early methods.

Are there any other reconstructions you would like to try?
Oh lots! The more I research, the more things I want to explore. Really early soap making is one that I am working on but haven't yet had the chance to try a full-scale series of experiments on.

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