Combs Are (Not) for Combing

The most obvious purpose of a comb would of course be to comb hair. Just like today, a person’s hairstyle was an “important signifier of identity”.Deliyannis, Dey and Squatriti, Fifty Early Medieval Things, 121. This means hairstyles can be telling for the social group or culture somebody belonged to. Medieval Benedictine monks had their tonsures, the Danes had their luscious bangs and shaved necks,Mary Clayton. “Letter to Brother Edward: A Student Edition.” Old English Newsletter. Accessed January 27, 2022, http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/print.php/essays/clayton40_3/Array. and the Lombards (or Langobardi) were known for their long beards.Deliyannis, Dey and Squatriti, Fifty Early Medieval Things, 121.

So to make sure their hair stayed on fleek, the people needed their combs. Eventually, though, even the sturdiest of combs would break after dealing with too many knots and tangles. These broken combs were discarded in waste pits, where archaeologists often find them during excavations.Deliyannis, Dey and Squatriti, Fifty Early Medieval Things, 121.

Besides keeping a comb for personal use, gifting a comb was also popular practice. Combs could range from simple and one-sided without any decoration, to richly decorated, double-sided ones that could be used both for detangling and for getting rid of lice.Paul Sorrell, “Alcuin's 'comb' Riddle,” Neophilologus 80, no. 2 (1996): 315. How convenient! As expected, the fancier the comb, the greater the status of the gift.Paul Sorrell, “Alcuin's 'comb' Riddle,” Neophilologus 80, no. 2 (1996): 313.The best example of this is the range of deluxe combs as classified by Artur McGregor, which are richly decorated combs made from a single piece elephant or walrus tusk.Paul Sorrell, “Alcuin's 'comb' Riddle,” Neophilologus 80, no. 2 (1996): 313. These rare and incredibly expensive combs were only gifted to people of great ecclesiastical importance, such as Alcuin of York and St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.Paul Sorrell, “Alcuin's 'comb' Riddle,” Neophilologus 80, no. 2 (1996): 313.

A last but very important role of combs can be found in cremations. At first glance, this does not make an awful lot of sense. As Howard Williams puts it, “[c]ombs are associated with hair and its management, yet cremation destroys the corpse’s hair and flesh, and fragments the skeletal integrity of the dead person.”Howard Williams, “Material culture as memory: combs and cremation in early medieval Britain.” Early Medieval Europe 12, no. 2 (2003): 92.. But it is for this very reason that combs were cremated with the body. Adding personal belongings that are so closely tied to life, like a comb, “helped to reconstitute the dead into a new ancestral material form.”Williams, “Material culture as memory”, 126. This means that death was not viewed as the end, but merely a transition into something new, and for that journey, the deceased person needed some of their belongings.Williams, “Material culture as memory”, 127.

In addition to aiding the deceased person in what comes next, cremating and/or breaking a comb could also help the people who mourned for them.Williams, “Material culture as memory”, 127. Processing the death of a loved one is hard, and it always has been. Yet, taking the belongings of someone, burning them with the body, and keeping them with the body can be seen as a physical, material way of saying goodbye. Just like the person, their belongings have thus passed on from this world to the next.Williams, “Material culture as memory”, 127.

How much meaning something seemingly simple as a comb can hold!