- Chapter Twenty Two -
One further aspect of ornament studies needs to be mentioned. Skeletal, and
sometimes cremated, remains from early excavations were frequently sexed on the
nature of the ornaments found with them. When better standards of skeletal analysis
allowed sexing without reference to associated artefacts, some 'male' bodies were
found to be associated with 'female' ornaments. Transvestism was one explanation
offered for such occurrences, but it is as likely that some correlations that had been
suggested, such as paired fibulae with female gender, were not as simple as adirst
thought. Many combinations of ornaments have become part of the grammar of
gender and status ascription, and it is certainly time for a full-scale reanalysis of the
bones themselves (where they survive - unfortunately, those from some of the largest
and most representative cemeteries have been lost or mixed together since excavation
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), together with the artefacts, so that
questions such as the status of women, or the possibility of cross-dressing males, can
be addressed in a context free from circular argument.
HEAD AND HAIR
Long-shanked pins with a variety of styles of head are found in the general area of
the skull, more frequently during Hallstatt C and D than in the La Tene periods.
These have been generally assumed to be hair pins, though they may rather have
served to attach or decorate hairnets or other head-covering. Some have a hollow
head constructed of two hemispheres of sheet bronze, while others have a solid
head of a decorative organic material such as amber, jet or coral. Some of the better-
furnished graves of eastern France and south-west Germany contain pins with very
large and highly decorated heads up to 4 cm in diameter, which may also be of
organic material (for example amber, decorated with patterns of concentric lines and
rows of inlaid dots; and segments of Mediterranean red coral, formed into spheres),
as well as bronze, or more spectacularly, decorated gold foil.
Pins are found in La Tene graves, though rarely in a similar position near the head,
and it is likely that the function of these is as a fastener for a garment such as a cloak
(or possibly a shroud). There is thus an implication of a change in hairstyle or head-
gear fashion at some point in the fifth century Be, at least among those who would
at an earlier period have sported such decoration. Current knowledge does suggest
that these hair/headgear pins were worn by women, though their very presence has
led to the identification of graves containing them as female, and there has as yet been
no study of su.ch pins which looks also at the anatomical sexing of the bones.EARRINGS
Earrings are found in male and female graves, though more frequently, and
occasionally in greater numbers, in the latter. Hollow gold or bronze crescents,
sometimes with attached pendants, occur in the Hallstatt period, while a variation of
this form with an open upper side, i.e. boat-shaped, is found in richer graves of the
Early La Tene. period, sometimes decorated with linear geometric ornament and412