From The "Nothing New Under the Sun" Department

Afghan man wearing a pakol

Boy wearing a clock, boots, and kausia.
Terracotta, made in Athens, 300 BCE

This evening, I was reading an Osprey text about the armies of Macedonia after the death of Alexander the Great, when I saw artists' images showing Macedonian army members wearing an odd kind of beret.  

I thought I recognized the beret.  It looked like a hat J. Peterman was selling in its upscale catalog back in the 1990s, which it labeled an "Afghan hat."  Nowadays, you can buy similar hats today on the Internet for as low as $9.99 USD; Amazon.com and Ebay sell such hats from various suppliers for prices ranging from about $15 USD to $30 USD.

When I attempted to find material on the Internet to confirm, or refute, my recollection, I came upon this Wikipedia article about a modern Afghan hat called a "pakol." Included with the article were two photographs from Wikimedia Commons (both featured here), one of a modern pakol, and one of an ancient Greek sculpture, showing a boy wearing a visually identical hat, which the Greeks and Macedonians called a kausia.  This style of hat originally was made as a woolen bag, with a bottom just a bit larger in circumference than the top. The bag is then rolled up until the hat is the right depth to sit comfortably on the head, and the larger bottom forms a kind of brim that lies above the rolled-up "headband." It is possible to tweak the circumference of the band by rolling or unrolling the bag.

At least some modern Afghans claim that Alexander introduced the hat to Nuristan and that there are modern Nuristans who are descendants of Alexander's troops. However, the actual adoption and wearing of the pakol in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and nearby areas today appears to date from the 20th century.

Back in the 1980s scholars debated whether Alexander's army introduced the kausia to Afghanistan and nearby regions, or whether he adopted the hat from the peoples there. One historical blogger summarizes the scholarly debate over the pakol's origins as follows:

It began with an article in American Journal of Archaeology in 1981, “The Cap that Survived Alexander”, in which Prof. Bonnie Kingsley made the arresting observation that the pakool closely resembles an ancient item of headwear, the kausia (καυσία)....

In 1986 Kingsley’s article received an academic response, and quite a decisive one. In Transactions of the American Philological Association Ernst Fredricksmeyer, an Alexander specialist, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the kausia was just too established a staple of the Macedonian wardrobe for it to have been imported from Central Asia toward the end of Alexander’s campaigns. ....

The debate between Kingsley and Fredricksmeyer rumbled on for a while ..., with Fredricksmeyer latterly slightly less confident about any connection between the pakool and Alexander the Great. The coup de grâce was administered by Willem Vogelsang of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (under the not-so-catchy title of “The Pakol, a distinctive but apparently not so very old headgear from the Indo-Iranian borderlands”), who showed that the pakool is actually a simple adaptation of caps with rolled rims worn all over the borderlands of China, India and Central Asia.

But the resolution of the academic debate does not tell us where or why the pakol (or pakool) re-emerged.  If the cap was adapted from similar types of cap in Central Asia, why did it take the old Macedonian form?   Surely there are other forms such a woolen cap could take?  Maybe the answer is just as Vogelsang suggests; that an adjustable wool cap is ideal for fighters and military men in mountain country.  Though in a way, it seems a little odd that there isn't more continuity of use of the cap from Alexander's time and today, since in many ways life in the Central Asian mountains hasn't changed all that much in the past two millennia.

Whatever the reason, the existence of the pakol today is a minor boon for Alexandrine period reenactors, who can easily find a genuine-looking hat for their kit for a reasonable price.  Alexander's men appear to have worn the kausia in white, and undyed white wool pakol are among those easily available on the Internet.  If you want a pakol simply for style, black, brown, tan, and gray are also available.

Ancient Greek Textile Book

From an Internet friend I learned about the existence of the following book:

Iris Tzachili and Eleni Zimi, eds.  Textiles and Dress in Greece and the Roman East:  A Technological and Social Approach.  Ta Pragmata Publications, 2012.  ISBN 978-960-98261-2-9.

Surviving textiles from ancient Greece and Rome are rare, and written material about survivals is rarer still, which is another reason why this book, a collection of articles prepared for a textiles conference, is of interest to students of ancient period costume.  I understand that one of the articles is about 4th century a purple silk textile with Roman-style tapestry inserts, woven in gold thread.

A quick Internet search revealed that an online bookstore based in Greece, Andromeda Books, sells this book for 19.17 € on this page.  They have one copy left.

Much as I'd like to (especially at this price) I'm not grabbing Andromeda's last copy, since I have little personal income and my husband and I are about to leave on a (mostly) prepaid two-week vacation. But if any of my readers are willing and able to jump on the opportunity, feel free! Alternatively, the ISBN and bibliographical information should enable interested costumers with limited funds to locate a copy by interlibrary loan.  Enjoy!
 

The Greek Head Wrap, in wear

Front view

Rear view

Finally, here are some pictures showing my head wrap in wear, taken by my patient husband from all of the standard angles.  Because I don't have a hand mirror, I didn't have more than a vague idea how this style looks on me from the back or in full profile until I saw these photographs.  The weird yellow shadows are caused by the odd lighting in the hallway where the photographs are taken; please try to ignore them.

Having tried to put on the head wrap about half a dozen times and looked these photographs over, I have a number of observations that may be worth thinking about:

1.  The wool band I used is probably a bit wider than necessary, and is too wide for the resulting style to look like the images on ancient Greek pottery. It's about an inch and a half (roughly 4 cm) wide, and it should probably be no more than an inch wide (2.5 cm) to resemble the period images.  That argues for using a tablet woven band or a commercially woven wool tape in an appropriate size.

2.  It is critical that the tape be wool and that the fabric be linen or a cotton rough enough not to be slippery.  Using different fibers would make it likely that the wrap would slide off one's head, no matter how tightly it was tied.  The fact that wool is easily dyeable with period-available substances enhances the ornamental value of such a wrap, and further supports the use of wool for the purpose.

Left side

Right side

3.  It's clear from Stephens's video that you want a piece of cloth wide enough to go around your head with a few inches of overlap and long enough to wrap around your bun.  Other than that, the exact size probably comes down to individual preference.  Perhaps I should have made the fabric piece a bit shorter, but doing that would make it hard to position the wrap so that all of the bun is covered--and I think the wrap looks better that way.

4.  It's difficult to wrap the band tightly if you are putting the head wrap on your own hair, because it's difficult to flip the ends of the band around in a way that guarantees that the entire length of the band will continue to lie smoothly while you are flipping them.  That leads me to the conclusion that Greek women probably used a cloth bag with a band attached for this style, instead of a flat piece of cloth.  That way, it would be easier to keep the bun covered as you wrap the band.

5.  Once the wool is knotted, however, the wrap is quite stable even if the band isn't knotted tightly, and it tends to stay put even if the band is not double-knotted.  The stability is a tribute to the self-sticking qualities of wool, and shows that this would have been a very practical style for a busy Greek woman.

If I make another such wrap, I will use a thin, narrow, tablet-woven band instead of thick wool.  I believe the resulting wrap would look both more authentic and more beautiful that way.  Still, this was a quick, interesting, and educational project, and I'm glad I did it.

HSM #3--A Greek Head Wrap, Completed!

The head wrap, laid out before use

A few minutes of rustling through the boxes and piles that comprise my "stash", a few hours with needle and thread, and voilà!  A head wrap, as shown in the photograph to the left.  (Click on the photograph for a larger and more detailed view.)

I ended up whipstitching the raw edge of my wool band to the edge of the linen, and then flipping the band over and tacking it down onto the right side of the linen.  The lumpy-looking border, by the way, is the edge of the selvedge of the flannel; I left it as-is and chose to put it on the right side of the wrap because I think it's decorative, in its way.  In my opinion, the best way to decorate this kind of wool band would be to apply some simple embroidery--probably nothing more than a wavy line down the band, repeated in, say, in white, yellow and red. Unfortunately, I haven't done any serious embroidery in years, and tonight was not the time to start.  Perhaps the task of ornamenting the band will be a good subject for a subsequent HSM challenge, sometime.

While I agree with Stephens that this style looks very much like the style shown on women on ancient Greek vases, that may be due in part to the fact that she demonstrated it on a woman with abundant, coarsely curly hair, a hair type that is more common in the Mediterranean region than it is where my ancestors came from.  My thinning, slightly wavy hair does not give the same impression, but the use of appropriately sized cloth makes it work as a hairstyle even though the shape of the wrap on my head and hair is a lot different than Stephens's inspiration images on ancient Greek pottery.  It's also possible, though, that the purpose of such a cloth head-wrap style was originally worn by older women with thinning hair, like me, who could no longer secure their hair adequately by simply wrapping a band around their pinned hair (the other style shown in Stephens's video). 

One of my commenters noted that the blue fabric remnants from my Iron Age skirt would look wonderful as part of such a head wrap. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any fragments from that cloth!  Did I throw them out in a fit of misplaced tidiness after completing the skirt? Probably. However, I had more than enough of the dark blue wool that I was planning to make into stockings to serve the purpose.  That wool is a bit thick for gracefully wrapping around my head, but I addressed that issue by washing it and drying it in the dryer to full it enough to minimize raveling and avoid having to hem it.  Wool tape would have been much better for this project because it's naturally thin while retaining wool's knack for sticking to itself, but I don't have any wool tape in my stash and, even if I had been able to obtain some before the end of March, buying some would have defeated the purpose of this challenge.

Hairstyling note:  Because my hair is thin, I would need a short bodkin (i.e., a straight, smooth, pointed-ended stick no more than about 3-4 inches or roughly 7-10 cm long) to fasten a bun that would not stick out way beyond the edges of the wrap and interfere with the wrap's drape.  Because I don't own such a short bodkin, I used a spare ponytail holder to wrap around the bun and keep it from unraveling while I tied the wrap in place. I think a bodkin would have held my hair more securely though.  Perhaps I'll improvise one out of a chopstick at some point.

HSM Challenge #3--Stashbusting

How long in stash?   The linen was only in stash about one year (it came from the leftover fabric for my bog blouse project last year). The blue wool flannel was purchased for a project at least as far back as about 2000, and thus is approximately 15 years old!

Fabric:  A scrap of linen, left over from my bog blouse project, cut and ripped to approximately 26 inches (roughly 45 cm) by 18 inches (about 66 cm), and a strip of dark blue wool flannel about 80 inches (roughly 200 cm) long. 

Pattern:  Based upon Janet Stephens's video showing the ancient Greek "head wrap" style and my own measurements.  It's two rectangles--a short, squat linen rectangle and a long blue wool strip; not much of a pattern.

Year:  Approximately 450-400 BCE, based upon the identification given of the Greek images that appear in Ms. Stephens's video.

Notions:   100% blue silk Gutermann thread (for stitching the wool band to the linen), and some white Londonderry brand 60/3 linen thread (for hemming the linen wrap itself).

How historically accurate is it?   Only somewhat.  I handsewed the wrap, the fabric types used are period, and Ms. Stephens demonstrates in her video that this type of wrap results in an appearance that is a good match for images of women found in period art.  However, no such item has, to date, been found by archaeologists working in Greece so far as I am aware.    So about 50%-60% is an appropriate accuracy rating.

Hours to complete: About 10 minutes to locate the fabric, 5 to 10 minutes to cut it to shape, and about 2 1/2 hours to hem the linen and to sew the wool band to the linen.

First worn:  Only to establish that I *can* use it as a head wrap.  I need a bit more practice in putting it on before I bother my spouse to take photographs of me in it to post on this blog.

 

Total cost:  Effectively zero.  The fabric for the bog blouse I obtained for store credit, the flannel is from a piece I bought about 15 years ago, and the thread was originally bought for other projects.

Hopefully, I'll have enough time in a month sometime this year to make something that requires more challenge and more than an hour or two of work!  On the other hand, both the head wrap and last month's Iron Age skirt would make great one afternoon projects for anyone looking for such a thing.

HSM #3--Another Last Minute Change of Plan

At the beginning of March, I planned to use some blue wool flannel from my fabric stash to make a pair of cut-and-sewn stockings for the "Stashbusting" challenge for the Historical Sew Monthly.

After that, there were more bouts of killer winter weather, several rush projects at work that ate into my weekends, and another round or two of strep throat.  As a result, it is nearly the end of March and I have done no work on the planned stockings whatsoever.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.

I was wondering whether I was going to have to give up on the March Stashbusting challenge altogether, when I found the video shown to the right of this post, which is one of a series of tutorial videos by Janet Stephens, hairdressing archaeologist, demonstrating her theories on how hairstyles depicted in classical Roman and Greek art were achieved.

As I watched the video, it occurred to me that the headwrap used for the second hairstyle would be easy to make, even in the time I have available, and that I could make it with linen fabric that I have in my stash. Unfortunately, I don't have a long enough piece of wool ribbon in my stash, but I could sew a ribbon out of wool fabric that I do have available.  Perhaps even the remaining wool from the Iron Age skirt I made in February will serve.  I don't have spangles to sew onto the ribbon, but I'm not sure that I'd want any.  A patterned tablet-woven band would be ideal, but I definitely don't have time to weave one, and don't have suitable wool in my stash anyway.   It will be fun to try out the Greek hairstyles, too.

Hopefully, this project will prove too simple for Murphy's Law to interfere, and I'll have something to post here before the end of the month.  Watch this space!