Mark Fennell

There has to be something more nefarious going on.

It's 1992, and two archaeologists are digging in a second-century fort ditch in Northumberland.

And they're finding all kinds of stuff.

Shoes, clothing, tools.

And then they unearth an artefact that looked, well, different but also familiar.

No, but she might have been using it for something else.

My name is Mark Fennell, and be warned, this is a very fun and very adults-only story of how a series of mysterious artefacts have changed our perception of our ancestors' sex lives, starting with the Roman object, which was no tool for darning.

In fact, to those male archaeologists, that tool was very familiar.

Which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, no one saw it coming.

So I get really irritated by this.

So this is the incredibly talented and, yes, somewhat irritated Dr Kate Lister.

Which brings us to the case of that Roman artefact, shaped like a member on one end and culminating with a sort of round handle on the other end.

Now, initially, when it was dug up, yes, they did assume that it was the sort of shape you could, like, wrap a sock over and therefore maybe was used for darning socks.

But a few decades later...

Two experts, weirdly, two guys named Rob, were less convinced of that likelihood.

True.

Because from the thin end of it, yes, it very clearly looks like the tip of a penis.

But if you flip it the other way, it kind of looks like a... Club.

The cliche of it.

Yeah, like a caveman club.