Race and Ethnicity: Hair and Medieval Ethnic Identities

Abstract

Hair types, hairstyles, facial hair, and hair coverings all feature among medieval markers of ethnic difference. During the period ca. 800 to ca. 1450, medieval Europeans formulated divisions between peoples that encompassed both cultural and bodily attributes. Where cultural distinctions were more often emphasized in the early medieval era, over the longer period and especially from the late twelfth century there was a gradual shift toward greater emphasis on physical markers of difference—including skin color, hair color and texture, facial features, height, and body shape. Yet the body did not at this time occupy the dominant place in anthropological distinctions that it came to possess in the modern era. Head, facial, and body hair make for an interesting focus in histories of medieval ideas of human difference, as they are the product as much of cultural practices as of natural variation.1 The aim of this chapter is to offer a brief and necessarily selective view of hair’s role in medieval constructions of human differences, especially between the Christian peoples of the hegemonic centers of Latin Christendom (that is, many of the regions now occupied by the nation-states of modern western Europe) and peoples perceived as foreign or different, whether in their midst, on their periphery, or in lands far distant.