Phalli and Defecation – How I Ended up as Co-author of an International Article

The first peer-reviewed article in which I am a co-author has just been published (available here). How I ended up as one of the authors of this international article was totally unexpected. It was all the more surprising since I had not published anything in English before this and I did not know the other authors of the article. So let me tell you how it all happened.

The phallic stone found at Vindolanda 19 May 2022.
Photo: vindolanda.com

In May 2022, during archaeological excavations at the Roman military camp of Vindolanda located along Hadrian's Wall in Northern England, a curious stone was discovered. It had a large phallus carved into it along with the Latin inscription SECVNDINVS CACOR. Numerous phalli carved into stones have been found at Vindolanda but none of the other phalluses are accompanied by such inscriptions. This fact along with the unusual Latin word cacor make this latest phallus stone from Vindolanda exceptional. The word cacor is clearly related to the Latin verb cacare which refers to shitting, but this form is not attested in any other ancient sources.

My tweet on 26 May 2022.

About a week later the discovery was reported online, and I happened to read the news on social media (available here). I immediately began pondering the engraved text and its possible meanings in relation to the large phallus. The interpretation mentioned in the press release, "Secundinus, the shitter", didn't seem wholly satisfactory to me, or at least not the only possible one, so I decided to share my own interpretations on Twitter. I considered the significance of the word cacor and its connection to defecation in light of other ancient sources.

One of the comments on Twitter.

My tweets were commented on by the user LatinNowERC who was part of the research team that reported the discovery. At the time I didn't know any of these researchers. It seems that my interpretations were in line with those of the Vindolanda team, and LatinNowERC asked if they could contact me via email. Later that same day I received a message from Alex Mullen, assistant professor at the University of Nottingham (now full professor) and the principal investigator of the Latin Now ERC project. She was planning an article about the Secundinus stone and asked if I would be interested in contributing to the article as co-author. Of course I was interested when asked by such an accomplished scholar, and to write about phalli and defecation no less!

I didn't hear back from Alex during the summer, but then I suddenly met her at an epigraphy conference in Bordeaux in August, and we discussed the article idea further. Apart from this conference, the work on the article was done entirely via email and shared files. Professor Alexander Meyer from the University of Western Ontario I have not met in person so far but I hope I will. We worked well together and the article took shape quickly. My part in the article primarily involved the cultural context and the various interpretations of the Secundinus stone.

At the conference in Bordeaux. I would've liked to have a photo
with Alex here but it seems we never took one together.

The article was mostly done by December 2022. We submitted it to the journal Britannia in January 2023, and made the necessary revisions during the spring. The article was accepted for publication in June, and it was published electronically in Britannia on 6 September 2023. Alexander and Alex also wrote a post in one of Vindolanda's blogs based on our article.

Collaborating with international researchers was a great and enlightening experience, particularly because I haven't published articles before this since my PhD dissertation will be a monograph. I got to see how an article evolves from an idea to publication and how the publishing process works. My more experienced colleagues were encouraging and I felt that my expertise in ancient phalli and scatology had a concrete impact on this publication. It was also great to see how these topics connect researchers from different parts of the world.

Thank you Alex and Alex for this opportunity!