Janet Stephens

Janet Stephens is an amateur archaeologist and hairdresser who has reconstructed some of the hairstyles of ancient Rome, attempting to prove that they were not done with wigs, as commonly believed, but with the person's own hair.^[1] She first became interested in this work in 2001, when she visited the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and saw some statue busts from the Greek and Roman collections.^[2][3] To quote her, "I had never seen the back of a Roman statue before—they are usually placed high on shelves/pedestal[s] with the backs tight up against a wall. As I circled the portraits I saw the logic of the hairstyles and determined to try some at home." ^[2] But she found that scholars mainly believed that the hairstyles were wigs.^[1] She didn't believe that, and set out to do her own research.^[1] In 2005, while studying translations of Roman literature, she realized the Latin term "acus", which has several meanings including a "single-prong hairpin" or "needle and thread," was being mistranslated as "single-prong hairpin" in the context of ancient Roman hairdressing.^[1] While single-prong hairpins could not have held up the elaborate hairstyles of ancient Rome, a needle and thread could.^[1]

In 2008 she published this theory as "Ancient Roman Hairdressing: On (hair) pins and needles" in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 21.^[4][1] In 2012 her video Julia Domna: Forensic Hairdressing, a recreation of a later hairstyle of the Roman empress, was presented at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting in Philadelphia. In 2013 she became the first to recreate the hairstyle of the Roman vestal virgins on a modern person.^[5][1]

Stephens also works as a hairdresser at Baltimore's Studio 921 Salon & Day Spa.^[6] Her maiden name is Janet Scott, and she grew up in Kennewick, Washington.^[7]

References

External links

• Janet Stephens's YouTube channel