Archaeologists have unearthed dozens of Roman tweezers in Britain, revealing the ancient culture’s obsession with hairlessness.
The collection has now gone on display in a new museum at Wroxeter Roman City, which in its prime would have been as large a settlement as Pompeii.
The simple tools would have been used not only for plucking eyebrows but for removing any unwanted hair – including in armpits.
The tweezers are part of a wider exhibition of more than 400 artifacts which illustrates the Romans’ preoccupation with cleanliness and aesthetic beauty.
Among the other items on show are a strigil (skin scraper), perfume bottles, jet and bone jewelry, make-up applicators and amulets for warding off evil.
English Heritage, which runs the museum in Shropshire, revealed the find on its website.
Cameron Moffett, English Heritage curator at Wroxeter Roman City, said online that the find was one of the largest of its kind in Britain, indicating that tweezers were a “popular accessory.”
“The advantage of the tweezer was that it was safe, simple and cheap, but unfortunately not pain-free,” he said.
The Romans greatly valued personal hygiene, attending communal baths daily. Many people would have had their own personal cleaning sets, including an ear scoop, nail cleaner and tweezers.
Usually associated with eyebrow shaping today, tweezers would have been used for general hair removal, including to pluck armpit hair, said English Heritage.
“It may come as a surprise to some that in Roman Britain the removal of body hair was as common with men as it was with women,” said Moffett.
“Particularly for sports like wrestling, there was a social expectation that men engaging in exercise that required minimal clothing would have prepared themselves by removing all their visible body hair.
Often performed by slaves, hair removal could be very painful. According to English Heritage, Roman author and politician Seneca complained about the noise at the baths in a letter, saying “the skinny armpit hair-plucker whose cries are shrill, so as to draw people’s attention, and never stop, except when he is doing his job and making someone else shriek for him.”
Wroxeter Roman City, or Viriconium Cornoviorum as it was known, is one of the best preserved Roman towns in Britain.
Previous excavations have uncovered the forum, the market, the bath house, a large hall known as the bath-house basilica and the town houses of wealthy residents.
