Description:
An ancient Roman hairpin, made of bone. The shaft is cylindrical and tapers to a point. It is surmounted by a female bust on a ribbed collar. Her hair is parted centrally, and long strands fall to her shoulders.
Bone pins with heads depicting a woman's head and shoulders occur in moderate numbers throughout the Roman empire (Cool (1983), p. 88). It has been suggested that these hairpins were used as imagines representing dead family members. They may therefore have been set up in household shrines (Henig (1977), p. 359; Crummy (1983), p. 25).
There has been a scholarly discussion about the use of these pins. One theory is that such pins were used to fasten garments; others have objected to that idea because in their view the pins were too thick and would damage the cloth. However, the average diameter of needles used to make those clothes is about the same; it would appear that material which can be sewn with thick needles will not be damaged by the use of large pins as fasteners. But brooches are well attested as cloak fasteners, yet their pins are slender. This would seem to imply that brooches and large pins do not share a common function. Also, to be effective as a clothes fastener a pin needs to have some means of gathering and holding in place folds of the fabric it is fastening, otherwise it will tend to slip. Roman pins do not have this feature. If we consider how common brooches were during the earlier Roman period and how much more efficient a fastener they were, it seems very unlikely that pins would have been used instead. It should also be noted that many pins of various materials have been found either on or close to the skulls of buried women, which points to their use as hairpins; there is also pictorial evidence showing that these pins were used to secure and decorate the hair arrangements of women and girls. Elaborate hairstyles requiring the use of hairpins were a Roman fashion (Crummy (1983), p. 19; Cool (1990), p. 150).
Although it is difficult to date many pins, it has been shown that based on the hairstyle many of the pins depicting female busts were in use during the second half of the first century and the early second century C.E. (Cool (1983), p. 88-90; Cool (1990), p. 168).
For hairpins in general, especially those made of bone and more in particular those with a human head, see Cool (1983), Volume 1, p. 45-119; Volume 2, p. 387-388 (Appendix B, Nos. 270 to 283); 502-658, esp. p. 630-631; Crummy (1983), p. 19-20 and especially p. 25-26 with fig. 23, no. 445.
Bibliography:
Hilary E.M. Cool, "Roman Metal Hair Pins from Southern Britain", Archaeological Journal, 147 (1990), p. 148-182;
Hilary E.M. Cool, A Study of the Roman Personal Ornaments Made of Metal, Excluding Brooches, from Southern Britain (Phd Thesis, University of Wales, 1983);
Nina Crummy, "A Chronology of Romano-British Bone Pins", Britannia, Volume 10 (November 1979), p. 157-163;
Nina Crummy (ed.), Colchester Archaeological Report 2: The Roman Small Finds from Excavations in Colchester, 1971-9 (Colchester, Colchester Archaeological Trust Ltd, 1983);
Martin Henig, "Death and the Maiden. Funerary Symbolism in Daily Life" in Julian Munby - Martin Henig (eds.), Roman Life and Art in Britain. A Celebration in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Jocelyn Toynbee (British Archaeological Reports, 41) (Oxford, 1977), p. 347–366;
Ros Tyrrell, "Bone hairpins" in M. Atkinson - S.J. Preston Heybridge, A Late Iron Age and Roman Settlement, Excavations at Elms Farm 1993-5 (Internet Archaeology, 40).
Dating:
Roman, circa first-second century C.E.
Size:
Height 11.4 cm.
Provenance:
Dutch private collection; with Bonhams London, 14 May 2003, part of lot 319; before that UK private collection, 1960s-1970s.
Condition:
Minuscule damage to the tip, else intact.
Price:
€ 800
Stock number:
C1313