An Experimental Exploration of the Earliest Soapmaking

Soap is a substance now taken for granted, but there is uncertainty, myth and misinformation about its development, and little scholarly attention has been paid to the likely circumstances surrounding its discovery. As part of a MSc in Experimental Archaeology, a project collated the earliest mentio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inEXARC journal no. 2024/3
Main Author Sally Pointer
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published EXARC 01.08.2024
Subjects
chemistry
roman era
textile
water
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Soap is a substance now taken for granted, but there is uncertainty, myth and misinformation about its development, and little scholarly attention has been paid to the likely circumstances surrounding its discovery. As part of a MSc in Experimental Archaeology, a project collated the earliest mentions of proto-soaps, reassessed previous experimental conclusions, and developed testable scenarios to explore how soap was first discovered, suggesting that the degreasing of fatty cloths after straining perfumed fats and oils may provide the conditions under which soap was first reliably and repeatedly observed. This paper offers a condensed version of this work.
ISSN:2212-8956