Hassan Yarmohammadi, Behnam Dalfardi, Alireza Mehdizadeh, and Sina Haghighat have a great summary on Al-Akhawayani in the 2013 European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare if you want to learn more!

He wrote about several methods of birth control. One of these methods advocated for using a sheath made from an animal's gallbladder to cover the penis during intercourse "and then fix this sheath to the penis, so after ejaculation, the semen pours into this bag, not into the womb."

Gabriele Fallopio allegedly had 1100 men test a linen sheath soaked in medical herbs as a barrier against syphilis, but he was not the first writer to advocate something similar to a condom! Even earlier is Al-Akhawayni Bukhari, a 10th c Persian physician who wrote the Hidayat, a medical text...

I am working with students to continue rehousing the legacy materials and catalog artifacts from the 2024 field season. I hope we can contribute useful knowledge of what was used at the site to help with the recovery process.

Get updates on the recovery at the Overfield Tavern's Facebook page.

(correction: linen sheath)

This work is ongoing, but I will continue to post here as results become available! #archaeology #experimentalarchaeology #zooms #zooarchaeology #historicalarchaeology #medicalhistory

devices in colonial North America. We are also trying to understand how the manufacturing and processing of artifacts might affect analytical methods like ZooMS. To that end, we made a sheepskin condom and took ZooMS samples at each manufacturing stage. 6/

We are continuing this work with funding from the Gloria King Fellowship and the EXARC Award. The original condom artifact we analyzed is from the mid-18th century, before the use of condoms was documented as widespread in North America. We want to better understand the early use of these... 5/

the 16th century priest and anatomist Gabriele Fallopio (of fallopian tube fame) suggested a lineman sheath soaked in medications to prevent the spread of diseases. Later, shops specialized in bespoke and reusable condoms made from caecums that could be cut to size. 4/

We found out that the artifact was made from a sheep! Specifically, it appears to be a caecum, a pouch along the intestine that is naturally sealed on one side. Sheep happen to have the perfect sized caecum for making condoms. It's unclear when condoms were first used, but... 3/

My colleagues, Brigid Ogden and Taylor Bowden-Gray, and I reached out to the MAC lab to suggest using ZooMS to ID what this mystery artifact was made with. ZooMS looks at the ratios of collagen peptides in skin, bone, or intestinal artifacts to determine the species of animal they came from 2/