Graduating senior Kaira Shlipak '26 was this year's recipient of the Gino and Adriana Zarbin Prize recognizing exemplary student research in Classical Archaeology. Her paper, "Reconstructing Textile Cleaning in the Ancient Roman Fullonicae," appears in the Journal of Experimental Archaeology, 2026/2.
The paper was orginally written for Prof Margaretha Kramer's Fall 2025 class CLST 12.02 Greek and Roman Engineering and Technology.
This project experimentally reconstructs textile cleaning in the ancient Roman fullonicae. White wool fabric was stained with olive oil, soil, wine, and tomato-based sauce to approximate the everyday soiling of Roman garments. After allowing the stains to set for seventy-two hours, the cloth underwent a washing, rinsing, and drying procedure modelled on descriptions and archaeological evidence of fulling workshops. A 1:1 mixture of stale urine and water was tested against a modern castile soap solution and a no-treatment control. The stale urine performed comparably to, and in some cases slightly better than, the castile soapat removing dirt and oil, while both treatments left the wool soft in texture. Notably, the urine-treated cloth retained no detectable odor after drying. These findings support the evidence for urine-based cleaning techniques in the ancient Roman fullonicae.
Link to published article here:
https://exarc.net/issue-2026-2/rev/reconstructing-textile-cleaning-ancient-roman-fullonicae
Congratulations, Kaira for your hard work!