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Hairstyles

Pontic Steppes

Men’s hair

Chang (2018) has documented several hair styles across depictions of Pontic Scythians:

• Hair, usually neck- or shoulder-length
  • Straight/hanging free
  • Tied with a thong or in a knot
  • Braided
  • Having bangs, with or without
• Facial Hair
  • Beards, both long and more closely cropped
  • Mustaches, both long and more closely cropped
  • Clean-shaven faces (depicting young men or possibly women)

Women’s hair

• no representations outside of Greek depictions of Amazons (or the above objects argued to depict women)

Altai

Men’s hair

The corpses in the Pazyryk burials had shaven heads, and the men’s corpses were also provided with false beards.

Women’s hair

As with the men’s burials, the women’s heads were also shaved. They were provided with tall headdresses made from human hair and felt or wood. Some of the headdresses were braided, while others were adorned with plaques.

Reconstruction of the Ak-Alakha 'ice maiden' (CC BY-SA 2.0 via Sue Fleckney)

N.N. Golovchenko (2019) has attempted several reconstructions of women’s hairstyles from the Altai-region burials.

References