Events > Hair
Two votive terracotta models of hair from the Wellcome Collection, c. 4th - 2nd centuries BCE, Italy. © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.
A seminar and discussion about material religion and hair. This online event will include talks by Professor Mary Harlow and Dr Valerie Hope.
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Talk abstracts
Ritual hair practices in Greece and Rome - Mary Harlow
The growing and cutting of hair, or the wearing of a particular style has ritual connotations in many cultures. In Greece and Rome different age stages, rites of passage and changes of status could all be marked by changes of hair. This paper will briefly survey some of the most well-known moments in which hair, or the removal of hair, played a significant part in the life course of an individual. It will also consider why hair was such a potent symbol in dedications to the gods and in sympathetic magic.
Bad hair days: Roman mourning and hair rituals - Valerie Hope
In the Roman world hair presentation and styling was important for both men and women, and this continued to apply during mourning. Following the death of a close relative, mourners were expected to treat their hair in certain ways, ways that often reversed and challenged the normative expectations for clean, neat and arranged hair. This paper investigates what mourners were expected (or were thought) to do to their hair, with a particular focus on cutting the hair and offering locks of hair to the dead. It explores the potent symbolism of hair, the materiality of hair and the ways in which hair contributed to the embodied and ritualised experience of public mourning.