Cosmetic Sets of Late Iron Age and Roman Britain

Abstract

• Cosmetic sets are small two-piece crescent-shaped bronze kits consisting of a grooved mortar and a solid rod-like pestle. They date from the Late Iron Age to the 4th century AD and are found almost exclusively in Britain. Far from being the rare and exotic amulets once thought, Ralph Jackson shows them to have been widely used toilet implements for the preparation of powders, probably mineral colourings for the face. The author’s research led to recognition of the type in the early 1980s and the British Museum has assembled the largest single collection (160 examples). These are fully catalogued in this volume together with hundreds of others, widely dispersed throughout Britain in museums and private collections. Full discussions of typology, function, manufacture, decoration, context and chronology place cosmetic sets firmly in the realm of personal appearance and identity in Late Iron Age and Roman Britain.