Three centuries of Roman limescale reveals a dirty secret about Pompeii’s public baths

It’s tempting to suppose that archaeology is filled with glamour – that it’s all about recovering wonderfully wrought artifacts from ancient tombs, or finding riches in unlikely places, like the 1000-year-old sword recently pulled by construction workers, corroded but intact, from a Dutch river. But more often, researchers must be content with faint hints of the past deduced from subtle traces left in the most mundane relics. It is remarkable what, with enough ingenuity, can be gleaned from the most unpromising of materials – such as Roman limescale.