319 (29)

291

Hair accessories

Changes in hairstyles and headdress are very noticeable from the figurative art of the 12th to 15th centuries, but until recently little of this was reflected in the archaeological record. Excavated materiał from London is now beginning to redress this lack and detailed evidence is becoming avail-able for the first time. Accessories discussed here include four silk mesh haimets, a hair-piece stitched to a silk filet (hairband), wire frames to which veils were attached originally and frag-ments of silk-covered wire and purl (coiled wire). Pins are described in a separate chapter, although many of them would have held hair and veils in place.

Knotted mesh haimets became part of the usual headdress for women in 13th-century Eng-land. They were often worn with two white linen bands: one, a barbetłe, passed under the chin and the other, a filet, went round the forehead (frontispiece & fig 139; Cunnington and Beard 1960, 10 and 79). Silk thread was used for four haimets of this type recovered from the city, one from a late 13th-century deposit (ceramic phase 8), two from a deposit of the second ąuarter of the 14th century (ceramic phase 10), and a tiny fragment from a deposit of the late 14th century (ceramic phase 11). The nets were madę in the round with a netting needle; a cord was subse-ąuently threaded through the long loops at the crown and a fingerloop braid was stitched to the short loops at the lower edge. A morę detailed account of them is given in a companion volume in this series (Crowfoot et al. forthcoming). Seven silk haimets of knotted mesh were recovered from deposits in Dublin which are provisionally dated to the llth or 12th centuries (Pritchard 1988, 156), but the London examples appear to be the earliest preserved from England.

The filet and barbette had declined in popularity by the early decades of the 14th century and women’s hair became morę visible. The old style was superseded in fashionable circles by plaits worn on each side of the face (figs 9 & 190), a fashion which had begun to evolve in France before the end of the 13th century (Evans 1952, 214). An illumination in the margin of the Luttrell

190 Plaited hairstyles c. 1340 (after The R omance of Alexander, MS Bodl.264 f.l73v)

191 Maid dre ssing her lady ’ s hair c. 1325-35 (after the LuttrellPsalter, BL Add. MS 42130 f.63)