This article examines the assumptions and methodology underlying the correlation between stepped pools and stone vessels and purity laws and practices. It focuses on the way these are interpreted in light of Second Temple period and early rabbinic texts. The article further introduces more complex understandings of the emergence of ritual baths in the Hasmonean period as an expression of Jewish ethnic identity, and the flourishing of ritual baths and stone vessels in the first century CE, as an indication of social individualism.