Honestly I'm swallowing this wholesale if it happened until like the early 90s or something. Maybe even later. To think of roman hairdressing styles as entirely an archeological question and never one where you might ask a hairdresser seems pretty par for the course for academia

I mean, tons of archaeologists have historically been idiots and loved white-male-splaining (among other 'splainings) things to indigenous cultures and discounting their works because no way could these black/indian/female/whatever people possibly be able to conceive of such a thing as this! Some of it could even have arguably spawned the ancient aliens bullshit because it must have been some kind of intelligent race and certainly not the ancient people of this land. Old antiquarians were often even worse.