Sculpted head hints at hair fashion for ancient hunter-gatherers
Sculpted figure with a face of the Amiens-Renancourt 1 site in France
Stéphane Lancelot / Inrap
A miniature statue dating from 27,000 years in the north of France can give us clues to the way in which the old hunters of the time led their hair.
The statuette was discovered in 2021 from an outdoor site about 140 kilometers north of Paris called Amiens-Rencourt 1, but has just been described by scientists.
He has long hair that seems to be braided with a grilled pattern, which could represent the net of hair or a unique hairstyle. This differs from the statuettes found through central and eastern Europe, where the hairstyle or the helmet is shorter and covers most of the head, explains Olivier Touzé at the University of Liège in Belgium, which was not involved in the study.
The unique hairstyle of the statuette can reflect the fashion of time and the region. “This could be a cultural particularity which would never have been emphasized only through these rare human representations,” explains the member of the Clement Paris team at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research in France.
Dating to the Radiocarbon of the Rock layers in Amiens-Renancourt 1 suggests that the figurine is about 27,000 years old, which is part of the Gravittien period, which lasted 33,000 to 26,000 years across Europe. After this period, the populations of hunter-gatherers left northwestern Europe for almost 10 millennia due to the very cold and dry conditions of the last glacial maximum, explains Touzé.
“The presence of ornamentation or a sophisticated hairstyle emphasizes the care devoted to the sculpture of this statuette,” explains Grégory Abrams at the University of Ghent in Belgium, which was not involved in research.
Other excavations on the site have uncovered several fragments of scrap metal and more than a dozen additional figurines, including Venus figurines which represent women. “It seems that the site has a workshop dedicated to [statuette] Production, ”explains Touzé.
But questions remain on the statuette and what it could reflect the people who did it. “The thoughts and myths of prehistoric times leave few traces,” explains Paris. “And when we have traces, like this statuette, their meaning remains enigmatic.”
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