It might be different for historians and archaeologists.

As an archaeologist, both myself and my colleagues are always a bit tired of seeing hairstyle presentations and talks at conferences. It seems like there’s always at least one.

This was even before the recent popularity of Stephens. I was at the AIA conference where her video was presented and I’m almost positive she had a poster presentation as well with wigs demonstrating the technique.

It was neat and still is neat but at least from our perspective as archaeologists it’ll never be anything other than neat. It’s one of those things that people never really gave much thought to archaeologically and there isn’t much physical evidence to support or argue against her claims.

There is however this weird gotcha kind of attitude towards archaeology for some reason. I was talking to some colleagues who focus on pseudo-archaeology about pseudoscience (not that this is pseudoscience) but there’s this really weird ‘big archaeology’ type attitude that the evil council of academics is preventing new ideas from coming to light.

Sure, in some cases there are overly conservative and grumpy archaeologists but for the most part, with things like Stephens, there wasn’t some weird cabal trying to stop the publication of hair-focused articles. It just really wasn’t a focus of most since it’s not really something that is traditionally archaeological.

I think one important piece of subtext to the piece is that the framing that the archaeologists had this one idea, that Roman women wore wigs, but a plucky hairdresser proved them to be wrong, is not in fact correct. Roman women used wigs, there are literary descriptions of it (Ovid Amores I:14) and there are sculptures that clearly depict two "levels" of hair. It also is not correct that "archaeologists thought" one thing and then it changed--for example when looking for pictures I stumbled over this article making much the same point regarding the assumption of wigs vs natural hair.

What is true is that archaeologists typically overapplied the fact that wigs existed and had a tendency to assume that all hair styles or at least all complicated hair styles, were wigs. A nice bit of experimental archaeology showed that is not a fair assumption, and left us with a more solid basis of understanding Roman hair style and a slightly larger aperture for understanding the world of Roman elite women. This sort of thing happens all the time--a good example is the Great Stirrup Controversy in which it was asserted that the introduction of the stirrup led to a revolution in military affairs in Europe, with attendant social changes and the rise of feudalism. Experimental archaeology has essentially proved this wrong, as reconstructions of the Roman saddle have shown that actually stirrups were not a particularly decisive bit of technology. Archaeology is a science, assumptions get challenged, ideas are overturned by new research, the field advances.

If there is a story here, it might be about gender: archaeology has historically been a male dominated field, so one could argue that the (largely male) researchers who were both less interested in the world of women and less familiar with the physical mechanics of hairdressing were thus more willing to make lazy, overbroad generalizations. I would not push this too far because at least in my experience many women archaeologists would not appreciate being told that, because they are a woman, they must just love studying hair style (and probably shoes too, amirite fellas?), but it is probably a factor.

Given that Stephens' research was published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology and she gave a presentation at the American Institute of Archaeology I don't think there is much of a David and Goliath story about the clever outsider challenging the staid old guard though.

I always encourage skepticism when looking at anything that's described or depicted as "groundbreaking" or otherwise revelatory in pop science / history circles. It's usually the case that its actual significance / importance has been over-inflated, and important caveats and nuances are ignored or actively cast aside.

You seem to have made the mistake that many people do when looking at experimental archaeology / replication, and jumped from "this is possible" to "this is how things were done." And then taken that another step further in the wrong direction, which I can see in your 2nd paragraph.

You're taking this too far in its implications, especially insofar as trying to spin an article around looking for "some reason that people got it wrong about wigs for so long [and what] that reveals... about the field of Roman archaeology."

In short, Stevens's discovery isn't a rebuttal of previous ideas. She didn't "change the field of Roman archaeology," and her ideas don't really contradict the existing understanding at all. It's just something more to add to the story.

She may have shown that it's possible to recreate the hairstyles shown on busts using needle and thread, but that doesn't really suggest that the hairstyles shown on busts are the person's natural hair, or that all such hairstyles were done with needle and thread. Or even that most were.

First of all, remember that busts aren't photographs. They don't capture a moment in time, but are the result of a long process of creation. So they can't really be studied / dissected in the same way that you might study a photo.

Roman busts were usually done using wax casts of the person's actual face as a reference, or from other visual illustrations / depictions. They were certainly not done using a living subject sitting for the portrait long enough to accurately reproduce the finer details of the hairstyle of the person in question in realtime. The hairstyle would likely have been reproduced from multiple references to a subject, but since the details that Stevens examined were of the back of the busts / heads, there's no reason to assume that the sculptor did not simply use a bust with a wig on it to provide a reference.

And of course, hairstyle was an important social and economic class marker. So regardless of whether the subject actually regularly wore X or Y hairstyle, they could be shown with that style to indicate their status. It's not as easy as saying, "Lucretia is wearing a Flavian-era hairstyle in her bust, therefore she regularly wore this style."

A bust is more like a painting, where the various elements are designed to send a message / convey information about the subject.

What that all means is that the hairstyles shown on these busts were probably not a direct representation of the hair of the person who is depicted, but show an idealized hairstyle (e.g., the elaborate Flavian-era hairstyle that Stevens purportedly first became interested in) or make an attempt to depict the actual hair (or lack thereof) of the person.

The hairstyles depicted on busts can't really be viewed as realistic depictions that can be studied as you would a photograph. Yes, they obviously provide some important clues about how the hairstyle might have been constructed, but it's not really something you can look at and say, "This is a wig, not the person's natural hair." And even if you said that, it's certainly not something that you can confirm, because that's not how a bust works.

Critically... Stevens has not shown that Roman historians are wrong about the use of wigs. There are clear written records about wigs being used by Romans.

Stevens has done replicative work that helps us to understand how some of the more elaborate hairstyles, wigs or not, may have been held together / shaped. That's very different from "disproving" other ideas.

There's often a tendency to look at experimental archaeology (and this would, to some extent, count) and assume that if something can be recreated using X or Y technique, that means that X or Y technique is de facto how things were done.

But as they say, there are many ways to skin a cat.

While Janet Stevens may have shown that it's possible to recreate these hairstyles with actual hair shaped using a needle and thread, that doesn't mean that wigs weren't also used. It doesn't even mean that wigs weren't always used.

We have enough written records and accounts of wigs in Roman society to know that Romans did in fact use wigs. They were made from human hair and from other natural fibers (e.g., wool). Presumably elaborate wigs would have had to be formed, shaped, and held in place in similar ways to an individual's actual hair. This would probably include needle and thread. Stevens has shown that's an effective way of shaping hair, but it's a jump from that to suggesting that the shapes shown on the busts that Stevens examined were actual / natural hair and not wigs.

All in all, Stevens did some interesting research and provided something new to our historical understanding of a part of daily Roman life. But, as is usually the case with such discoveries that make their way into pop science / pop history blogs and stories, this isn't especially groundbreaking.

Is it possible that Roman women's hair was shaped by needle and thread? Sure, it's possible.

Is it also possible that Roman women wore wigs that were shaped by needle and thread? Also yes.

Given the fact that Stevens's experimentation was done using wigs on mannequins, I'd say that it's fairly evident even from her own work that this does not show that "lots of hairstyles were not in fact wigs but done with needle and thread," but rather shows some of how some of the hairstyles / wigs that were depicted in busts were likely created.

Here's an interview with Stevens: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/14729

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Gonna crosspost this answer to your other posted threads.