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Pointy hats have been a distinctive item of headgear of a wide range of cultures throughout history, in particular suggesting an ancient Indo-European tradition, but they were also traditionally worn by women of Lapland, the Japanese, the Mi'kmaq people of Atlantic Canada, and the Huastecs of Veracruz and Aztec (illustrated e.g. in Codex Mendoza). The Kabiri of New Guinea have the diba, a pointy headgear glued together.

Bronze Age

The conical golden hats of Bronze Age Central Europe were probably a ceremonial priestly accessory. See also horned helmet.

Iron Age

Textile analysis of the Tarim Mummies has shown some similarities to the Iron Age civilizations of Europe dating from 800 BC, including woven twill and tartan patterns strikingly similar to Celtic tartans from Northwest Europe. One of the unusual finds with one of the mummies was a distinctively pointed hat:

Yet another female - her skeleton found beside the remains of a man - still wore a terrifically tall, conical hat just like those we depict on witches riding broomsticks at Halloween or on medieval wizards intent at their magical spells. (Barber 1999:200)

Pointed hats were also worn in ancient times by Saka (Scythians), and shown on Hindu temples and Hittite reliefs. The name of the Scythian tribe of the tigrakhauda (Orthocorybantians) is a bahuvrihi compound literally translating to "people with pointy hats".

The Hallstatt culture Warrior of Hirschlanden is wearing a pointy hat or helmet.

Hephaestus, the Cabeiri as well as Odysseus are traditionally pictured as wearing a Pilos, a woolen conical hat.

• Relief in Hattusa, probably depicting Suppiluliuma II.
• The "golden man" of the Issyk kurgan. The "golden man" of the Issyk kurgan.
• Odysseus wearing a Pilos

Middle Ages

The 9th century Cumans are reported to have fought wearing pointy hats.

The papal mitre in the 12th century was conical. Mitra papalis is a type of conch named after the papal mitre for its form.

Following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing which often took the form of the pointed Jewish hat (or "Judenhut"), which were already worn by Jews, probably imported from the Islamic world, and perhaps before that from Persia.

Popular among Burgundian noblewomen in the 15th century was a type of conical headgear now called a hennin.

The whirling dervishes from the 13th century wore hats similar to the hennins, and the Ottoman Janissaries wore similar headgear to show their veneration for Hadji Bektash, founder of a Sufi order.

Conical hats were also popular in late medieval Vijayanagar, India.

The term dunce cap is only attested from 1840, but allegedly (according to Cecil Adams), John Duns Scotus in the 14th century recommended the wearing of conical hats to stimulate learning.

The Schedelsche Weltchronik printed in Nuremberg in 1493 shows the "genealogy of Japhet" in a woodcut by Michael Wolgemut (1433–1519). Gomer is shown in a pointed hood, Ascenes, from the 1530s often identified with Tuiscon, wears a Jewish hat.

Modern times

During the 16th and 17th centuries, commoners in England and Wales often wore pointed hats. The Quakers took the custom to the New World. Likewise, the Spitzhut is a traditional headgear in Bavaria.

Pointy hoods were used by various secret orders and Catholic lay confraternities for processions, e.g. the Semana Santa of Sevilla, and eventually also adopted by the Ku Klux Klan.

Unhooded pointy hats are still worn in rural Louisiana Mardi Gras celebrations by the Cajuns, where they are known as capuchons.

In the Nintendo Gamecube game Animal Crossing, human girl characters are shown wearing pointy, cone-shaped hats.

Folklore and fiction

Classical pointy hats are worn by the dwarfs, witches and wizards of European myth. See also Garden gnome, Smurfs, Gandalf, Merlin, Odin.

The developers of the FreeBSD Project award symbolic pointy hats (Dunce hat) to other developers or themselves, usually in humorous intent, to highlight mistakes.

See also

• Hennin
• Phrygian cap
• Mitre
• Judenhut
• Dunce cap
• Sugarloaf hat
• conical straw hat
• Gugel
• Capuchon
• Party hat
• Chinese hat knob

References

1. http://www.jadukids.de/ursprung/ursprung2/Seiten/ur18_jpg.htm
2. http://www.siue.edu/COSTUMES/PLATE15AX.HTML
3. Jewish hat article
4. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/society/A0822937.html
5. http://www.editionhutter.de/german.htm

• Barber, A.W. (1999). The Mummies of Ürümchi. Macmillan, London.

External links

• Other groups from the Middle ages who wore tall pointy hats!
• Pagan Myths Debunked: Where Did You Think That Pointy Hat Came From, Anyway?

• Headgear
• Hats