Celtic god or 1980s hockey player? Ancient deity statue wears a mullet and mustache

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 4 days ago

Business in the front, party in the back.



Two views of the restored copper statue show its fashionable hairstyle. (Image credit: National Trust/Oxford Archaeology East/James Fairbairn)

A tiny statue of a Celtic deity dating to the Iron Age wears a haircut that was widespread — and widely mocked — decades ago, but is now enjoying an unexpected comeback: the mullet.

Worn with the hair cut short in front and long at the back of the head, mullets surged in popularity during the 1980s. Archaeologists recently discovered the same hairstyle on a copper figure measuring about 2 inches (5 centimeters) high, found in an Iron Age site in Cambridgeshire, England, and dating to the first century A.D.

Like countless soccer players, hockey stars, rock musicians and mallgoers that came thousands of years later, the statue's hair is cropped close to its head around the crown and flows long down its back, representatives of the National Trust in the United Kingdom said in a statement. Also like many male mullet-wearers from the 1980s, the statue sports a tiny mustache.

In 2018, archaeologists began excavating a site at Cambridgeshire's Wimpole Estate, uncovering a rural settlement spanning several centuries — from the late Iron Age, beginning around the first century B.C., to the early Roman period. In addition to the statue, they found about 300 metal objects, including fittings from a Roman military uniform; cosmetic tools; coins and nails; and fittings for horse harnesses.

More:
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[dchill]

1. A good idea just never goes away!

[XanaDUer2]

2. everything old is new again! Nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Several years ago I visited the Petroglyph National Monument

near Albuquerque, and I swear one of the petroglyphs was someone wearing a scuba mask and breathing tube. Honest to god.

There truly is nothing new under the sun.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Wow. That would encourage a lot of thought, wouldn't it? Very interesting. Thanks! ⭐️ 🚀🌌

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. It did have me wondering.

A reasonable explanation is that what I was interpreting as a scuba mask and breathing tube was something else entirely, something that would have made total sense to the people of that time and place.

Some years back, in the South American Hall of the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian, one small artifact on display looked exactly like a small model of a jet fighter of some kind. I was told it was a cicada. But cicadas don't have the kind of upright triangular tail of a jet fighter, nor do they have the top cross piece that some of them sport. Perhaps the artist merely took a lot of artistic license in his rendering of a cicada. The South American Hall has long since been replaced with something else, so that interesting artifact is in storage somewhere. Who knows if it will ever see the light of day again?