Janet Stephens - Wikipedia

Janet Stephens (née Scott) is a hairstyle archaeologist[1] who studies historical hairstyles, aiming to prove that they were not achieved by using wigs, as commonly believed, but by styling the person's own hair.[2][3]

She first became interested in ancient hairdressing styles in 2001, when she visited the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and saw some statues from the Greek and Roman collections that included busts that could be viewed in the round, from all directions.[5][6] Stephens said,

I had never seen the back of a Roman statue before—they are usually placed high on shelves/pedestal[s] with the backs tight up against a wall. As I circled the portraits I saw the logic of the hairstyles and determined to try some at home.[5]

In research she conducted, she found that scholars mainly believed that elaborate ancient hairstyles, depicted in artworks of the times, were wigs.[2] Believing otherwise because of her observations, Stephens set out to do her own research.[2] In 2005, while studying translations of Roman literature, she realized the Latin term acus, which has several meanings including a "single-prong hairpin" or "needle and thread", was being mistranslated consistently as "single-prong hairpin" in the context of ancient Roman hairdressing.[2] While single-prong hairpins could not have held up the elaborate hairstyles of ancient Rome, a needle and thread could have.[2] In 2008, Stephens published this theory as "Ancient Roman Hairdressing: On (hair) pins and needles" in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 21.[7][2]

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