While some of these bone and ivory pins are undoubtedly personal objects, used as hair pins and possibly for fastening clothes, these fragile objects from the Roman Villa at Minster in Thanet may also reflect the enormous variety of crafts and industries that were carried out in and around the Villa.

Some pins and broken fragments of pins which have eyes through in the upper part of the shaft, are probably large needles. Being made of such a brittle material  they were perhaps used to stitch together soft woollen cloth, perhaps in a process associated with weaving, or perhaps they may have been used to make and mend nets.

Similar straight wood and ivory  pins with their carefully carved terminals can be found among the bobbins of lacemaker’s  tool kits in the present day, although there seems to be no direct evidence of Roman lacemaking.