The Tattoo

This thesis is an investigation into the legitimacy and limits of the term “body art” in its vernacular sense, wherein it refers to methods of decorating or ornamenting the body, such as tattooing or piercing. Though the term is widely used and widely understood, it has rarely appeared in any writing which takes an explicitly arthistorical or art‐critical approach, and has never been subjected to any sustained analysis which uses the methodologies deployed by specialists when engaging with other forms of art. If tattooing and its coincident technologies are “body art”, they have not as yet been understood as such by art historians.

The arguments made over the course of this work thus amount to a case for the applicability of art‐historical and art‐theoretical methodologies to body modification practice. The thesis first establishes the existence of a rhetorical yet broadly undefended case for the artistic status of practices which alter the form of the body. This claim is to be found amongst both the contemporary subcultural body modification community and amongst plastic surgeons. With particular reference to theories of art and aesthetics by John Dewey, Richard Shusterman, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the work investigates whether such claims are tenable. In light of these investigations, the thesis then presents a number of problems which immediately arise from such a claim – problems of authorship, ownership, objectivity and value – and attempts to resolve them through detailed analysis of a number of case‐studies.

(The full thesis can be downloaded from the British Library's EThos Service at http://ethos.bl.uk by searching "Lodder" or the thesis' persistent ID, 525734 - registration required)

For thousands of years astonishingly rich and diverse forms of tattooing have been produced by the Indigenous peoples of North America. Long neglected by anthropologists and art historians, tattooing was a time-honored traditional practice that expressed the patterns of tribal social organization and religion, while also channeling worlds inhabited by deities, spirits, and the ancestors. TATTOO TRADITIONS OF NATIVE NORTH AMERICA explores the many facets of indelible Indigenous body marking across every cultural region of North America. As the first book on the subject, it breaks new ground on one of the least-known mediums of Amerindian expressive culture that nearly disappeared from view in the twentieth century, until it was reborn in recent decades.

In addressing skin this paper seeks to illuminate current research within consumer culture theory. Framing our discussion within a consideration of tattoo culture, we explore the double-sidedness of skin, its ambiguity and ambivalence. In this way, we examine the relationship between identity and consumption and throw into question many of the received ideas concerning embodied identity within consumer research. Utilizing three skin metaphors (skin as container, projection surface, and cover to be modified), we generate a ...

Beginning in the late nineteenth century around the Bering Strait, ornate pieces of carved fossil ivory bearing decorations unlike anything previously known from the Eskimo region began appearing in museum collections. These small, deeply patinated artifacts, which originated from ancient village sites across the region and passed from the pockets of Indigenous collectors to American whalers, teachers, traders, and museum curators, were evidence of a distinctive and scarcely known prehistoric maritime culture of northwestern Alaska and neighboring Siberia. Beautifully incised harpoon heads and socket pieces, animated zoomorphic drum and box handles, anthropomorphic figures inscribed with tattoos and body ornaments, and other objects of “unknown use” largely comprised the “high fossil ivory culture” of a society that appeared to have been centered on St. Lawrence Island,
parts of the adjacent Asiatic coast, the Diomede Islands, and portions of the Seward Peninsula of Alaska (Hrdlička 1930:174).

By the mid-1920s anthropological interest in the origins of these Paleo-Eskimo peoples peaked (Collins 1937:iii), resulting in a series of archaeological expeditions to the Bering Strait that continues to the present day. On St. Lawrence Island and the neighboring Chukotka Peninsula of Russia, excavations revealed a succession of closely
related and partially overlapping cultures—Okvik/Old Bering Sea (~50 to 800 CE) and Punuk (800 to 1200 CE)—whose settlements and cemeteries exhibited some of the finest art ever produced by a hunting society.1 Lured to the Bering Strait by vast herds of ivory-bearing sea mammals like walruses and large whales, these maritime peoples from Asia were led by shamans, whaling captains, and notable warriors. Both men and women of these peoples tattooed their bodies and crafted human figurines, or “dolls,” that often displayed ornate and naturalistic personal adornments, including amulet straps, beaded headbands, and permanent body markings that have counterparts in recent history and practice.

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For thousands of years, Native Americans throughout the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains used the physical act and visual language of tattooing to construct and reinforce the identity of individuals and their place within society and the cosmos. The act of tattooing served as a rite of passage and supplication, while the composition and use of ancestral tattoo bundles was intimately related to group identity. The resulting symbols and imagery held important social, civil, military, and ritual connotations within Native American society. Yet despite the cultural importance that tattooing held for prehistoric and early historic Native Americans, modern scholars have only recently begun to consider the implications of ancient Native American tattooing and assign tattooed symbols the same significance as imagery inscribed on pottery, shell, copper, and stone.

"Drawing with Great Needles" is the first book-length scholarly examination into the antiquity, meaning, and significance of Native American tattooing in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains. The contributors use a variety of approaches, including ethnohistorical and ethnographic accounts, ancient art, evidence of tattooing in the archaeological record, historic portraiture, tattoo tools and toolkits, gender roles, and the meanings that specific tattoos held for the Dhegihan Sioux and other Native American groups, to examine Native American tattoo traditions. Their findings add an important new dimension to our understanding of ancient and early historic Native American society in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains.

Introduction / Carol Diaz-Granados and Aaron Deter-Wolf
1. Native American Tattooing in the Protohistoric Southeast / Antoinette B. Wallace
2. Needle in a Haystack: Examining the Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Tattooing  / Aaron Deter-Wolf
3. Swift Creek Paddle Designs as Tattoos: Ethnographic Insights on Prehistoric Body Decoration and Material Culture / Benjamin A. Steere
4. Tattoos, Totem Marks, and War Clubs: Projecting Power Through Visual symbolism in Northern Eoodlands Culture / Lars Krutak
5. The Art of Enchantment: Corporeal Marking and Tattooing Bundles of the Great Plains / Lars Krutak
6. Identifying the Face of the Sacred: Tattooing the Images of Gods and Heroes in the Art of the Mississippian Period / F. Kent Reilly III
7. Dhegihan Tattoos: Markings That Consecrate, Empower, and Designate Lineage / James R. Duncan
8. Snaring Life from the Stars and the Sun: Mississippian Tattooing and the Enduring Cycle of Life and Death / David H. Dye

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Since his recovery from an Alpine glacier in 1991, the naturally-mummified man known as “Ötzi” has come to represent a triumph of modern scientific analysis. After nearly three decades of research, scientists know more about this 5,300-year old man than perhaps any other ancient human. Studies have examined the tools he carried, the clothes he wore, his health conditions, the ingredients of his last meal, deciphered his complete genome, and even identified the bacteria that inhabited his gastrointestinal tract. Analysis has also shown that Ötzi’s body was adorned with at least 61 tattoos, the oldest preserved examples of this behavior discovered to date.

For the past decade, archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf of the Tennessee Division of Archaeology has been studying the archaeological evidence for tattooing. He is co-editor of the new volume, “Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing,” has authored multiple book chapters and articles on tattoo archaeology, and in 2016 appeared in a NOVA documentary discussing Ötzi’s tattoos. Join Aaron on September 15th for a program to discuss Ötzi’s life, death, and discovery, and what 5,300 year-old tattoos can tell us about human behavior and the ancient world.

Tattooing comprises a socially and ritually significant activity spanning hundreds of cultures and thousands of years, yet which at present appears to have left very little evidence in the way of material culture remains.Some tools used to tattoo in the past were undoubtedly made from small, fragile, and biodegradable materials which have not preserved in the archaeological record. However, other implements manufactured from more durable materials such as stone and bone should have -- depending on local preservation conditions -- better survived the ravages of time. Although many of these tools have likely been excavated or collected, relatively few have been formally recognized as tattoo implements.

Previous research has suggested that use-wear analysis -- the examination of microscopic patterns created by friction as a tool is used -- might provide a means for identifying bone tattoo implements in archaeological collections. However, that earlier work was limited in scope and did not provide conclusive results. In this chapter we revisit the subject of tattooing with bone tools in order to test the replicability of previously-documented microwear and thereby further assess the applicability of use-wear analysis in identifying ancient tattoo implements. In addition, we evaluate the suitability of pig skin as a proxy for in vivo use-wear studies by comparing the trace results of tattooing deceased porcine and live human skin with replica bone tools.

For thousands of years, peoples around the world have practiced tattooing because of its perceived efficacy as a medicinal therapy. As a form of medical treatment, tattoo thus exposed specific body locations where preventive, curative,
and spiritualistic medicine was practiced. Drawing on the palaeopathological record of tattooed mummies and ethnographic research, this paper will explore the indelible legacy of therapeutic corporeal marking to reveal the complex
system of tools, techniques, and beliefs by which ancient and more recent cultures attempted to control their bodies,
lives, and experiences. Keywords: Tattooing, Medicinal Praxis, Indigenous Peoples, Mummies, Corporeality

This is a preview of the article published in the 2016/2017 Collector's Edition of Asian Geographic Passport Magazine, pp. 62-71.

For centuries, indigenous tattooists working across Asia have marked human skin with powerful designs and symbols in their quest to signal ethnic identity and render the body sacred. Carried through life and onwards into
death, these marks of humanity testify to an ancestral legacy that is in danger of gradually fading away...

In addressing skin this paper seeks to illuminate current research within consumer culture theory. Framing our discussion within a consideration of tattoo culture, we explore the double-sidedness of skin, its ambiguity and ambivalence. In this way, we examine the relationship between identity and consumption and throw into question many of the received ideas concerning embodied identity within consumer research. Utilizing three skin metaphors (skin as container, projection surface, and cover to be modified), we generate a series of insights into intercorporeality, embodiment, and body projects.

"RE/Search Publications' 'Modern Primitives' (1989) changed countless lives, bringing what had been a localised and niche set of body modification practices, aesthetics and philosophies out of San Fransisco to a global audience, dominating scholarly and popular discourse around body modification subculture for more than a decade afterwards. The voice of Fakir Musafar, dominates the book. This paper argues that modern primitives as Fakir defines them never really existed (and never could have existed) in the terms he suggests, and address an important sub-strand within Modern Primitives almost entirely ignored by critics and commentators: contributors who do not frame their practice in "primitive" terms."

The accepted version of this paper is now in Open Access, via the Centaur repository at the University of Reading. (See link below)

Tattoos have been reported from human remains representing a wide range of cultures and time periods. While the practice of tattooing can be studied using a variety of types of historical evidence, antiquity leaves only naturally and deliberately preserved human skin as a direct source. Today, scholarly research recognizes the Tyrolean Iceman known as Ötzi, dating from 5300 years ago, as the mummy with the oldest tattoos. A complete mapping of this mummy’s tattoos was recently reported. This work has demonstrated the presence of 61 tattoos divided into 19 groups located on different parts of the body. The examination of these tattoos and their locations on the mummy’s body are especially useful for helping researchers to better understand the function of tattooing in prehistoric times. The existing perception regarding tattooing in the past is that the practice evolved as a medicinal therapy. By mapping these tattoos, specific body regions targeted for preventive, curative, and spiritualistic medicine can be elucidated. Using ethnographic data and the bioarchaeological record of tattooed mummies, this chapter explores the development of corporeal markings that were significant from a medical viewpoint. This chapter also discusses the complex system of tools, techniques, and beliefs by which ancient people attempted to control their health, pain and status in society.

Analyses of archaeological bone tool assemblages from the southeastern United States rely principally on morphological classification systems to delineate typologies and infer artifact function. Under these systems the actual purpose of pointed bone artifacts generically classified as “awls” is frequently overlooked. In this study we move beyond basic morphological classification by combining zooarchaeological analysis, technological assessment, use-wear analysis, and materials science studies to examine an assemblage of bone tools from an ancient Native American site in central Tennessee. Our analysis reveals that approximately 3500–1600 BCE, occupants of the Fernvale site employed sharpened turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) bone tools as tattooing implements, and that both red and black pigment remains are directly associated with these artifacts. These materials comprise the earliest directly-identified tattooing tools to date, and demonstrate the persistence of Native American tattooing in southeastern North America over at least three millennia.

A series of tattoo were discovered in remains from the Pazyryk culture. Their subjects are usually animals depicted in dynamic poses. There are visible differences in tattoo practices between social groups; for common peoples, the tattoo was normally on the hands or shoulder. Gender preferences are also visible in the types of torment’ scenes and tormented animals depicted. The most popular figures depicted in the tattoos were a monster – a wild goat with an eagle’ beak and a panther’s tail and also a realistic wild ram. A panther with very long spiral tail was known in China as a monster of nomadic origin. There are two images of Chinese zoomorphic goods. On the images of nomadic Iranian groups we see a probable tattoo on the cheeks only with two or three horizontal lines.

Drawing upon Frank's (1995) discussion of the personal and social aspects of embodied storytelling, this paper considers the tattoo as a form of visual communication created within a multiplicity of contexts. Based on in‐depth interviews with eight tattooed men and women, the focus of this article is the stories that these individuals tell about their tattoos. I argue that the tattooed body is a distinctively communicative body. It has a great deal to say, not only about the identity of the wearer, but also about the culture in which she lives. I conclude with some reflections on examining the tattoo as a conceptual latchkey—a tool that may enable researchers to begin to unlock the complicated relationship between the body, self‐identity and society.

When Spanish conquistadors landed in the Philippines in 1521, they encountered heavily tattooed local peoples they called “Pintados” or the Painted Ones. Five hundred years later, traditional tattooing across the Philippines is nearly extinct. Today, it survives only in remote regions of Mindanao and the Cordillera Region of Luzon (Krutak 2014b).

One of the last remaining tribal tattoo practitioners in the Philippines is ninety eight-year-old Whang-Od (fig. 3.1), a respected Kalinga elder from the village of Buscalan, who has been tattooing clients for more than eighty years (Krutak 2010). Utilizing the timeworn technique of hand-tapping, she hammers her pomelo thorn tool into the quivering flesh of domestic and international tourists who are in search of a lasting souvenir, as well as local Kalinga villagers who seek to reassert their Indigenous roots in an increasingly globalized world.

Like the tattoos of the Ibaloy (see chapter 2, this volume), Kalinga tattoo motifs were derived from nature: rice bundles, centipedes, python scales, and eagle wings. Generally speaking, women’s tattoos were symbols of adulthood, while men’s tattoos demonstrated accomplishments on the battlefield (Krutak 2010).

One decade ago, however, the future of Kalinga tattooing was certainly in doubt. Tattoos were no longer being given, and with the passing of successive generations of tattooed elders the custom was rapidly vanishing. But this trend would change around 2006, when Whang-Od began apprenticing her great-niece Grace Palicas to take over....

The employment of the tattooing to mark various parts of the human body, is a ‘custom’ that appears throughout the centuries in numerous regions and cultures. Through the existing examples it is pointed out that it was very popular among the ancient Thracians. Either as a sign of nobility for the men of Thrace, or as a mark of punishment on the Thracian women for the death of Orpheus, the Thracian tattoo is testified through the literary sources and the iconography. Focus of this paper is to explore the visual and written information regarding the Thracian ‘custom’ of tattooing and to investigate its symbolism and meanings. In order to do that within the right context, it is provided some brief general information on tattooing and an introduction to the Thracian people and their habits. The Thracian tattoos are approached through the ancient Greek view and they appear to be signs and symbols of various and different status.

Although tattooing existed throughout the ancient world, there have been few archaeological identifications of actual tattoo implements outside of Oceania. This chapter discusses the archaeological footprint of ancient tattooing and uses cross-cultural comparative ethnographies to examine the material culture of the practice. These data show that identifying tattoo tools in an archaeological setting requires convincing association of those materials with pigments, supported by various additional items from a tattoo toolkit. Applying these associations to the archaeological record allows for identification of the oldest potential tattoo tools to date and suggests tattooing originated during the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa.

PLEASE NOTE:
In the time since this chapter was published, there have been important advances in archaeological efforts to identify tattooing tools through microwear signatures. Thanks to that work, and particularly the efforts of Gates St-Pierre (2018), we now know that use-wear on the bone tools from Blombos Cave discussed in this paper is *not* compatible with tattooing. The contextual argument presented here for identifying tools based on patterns of artifact associations still stands.
See:  Gates St-Pierre, C. 2018. Needles and bodies: A microwear analysis of experimental bone tattooing implements. J. Archaeol. Sci. Rep. 20: 881–887. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.10.027.

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As of January, 2024 this database has been moved to an ArcGIS Storymap and no longer being updated as a text file. For the most recent version, please see: Tattooed Human Mummies [ArcGIS story map] (https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19339.05925/2)
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The following presents a global data set identifying naturally- and deliberately preserved tattooed human remains from the archaeological record. The initial version of this list (Version 1.0) was compiled in 2016 for inclusion as Table 1 in the journal article “The World’s Oldest Tattoos” (Deter-Wolf et al. 2016). Benoît Robitaille, Lars Krutak, and Sébastien Galliot all contributed to that initial effort.

Entries in the data table are organized broadly by date, and rely on direct dating wherever possible. Where radiocarbon data is available, dates represent calibrated ranges. Each entry also includes documentation as to the associated archaeological culture, site, and significant source material. At the present time, unpublished and/or unprovenienced specimens from museums and private collections are not generally included in the data set.

European explorers and settlers who traveled throughout the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains beginning in the sixteenth century left behind both textual and visual documentation of their journeys and of the people they encountered. The specific geographic areas and indigenous groups documented in the ethnohistorical record vary widely. However, one consistent aspect of these accounts is the description of permanent patterns and colors inscribed on the flesh of various Native American groups who interacted with the European chroniclers.

It is unlikely that the indigenous tattoo traditions documented throughout the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands beginning in the sixteenth century were recent cultural innovations. However, after more than a century of scientific archaeology very little is known about the origins or material culture of prehistoric tattooing in the study area. The introduction of European metal needles as trade items quickly replaced indigenous technology and thereby permanently altered traditional tattooing practices. To date archaeologists have seldom attempted to identify the artifact remains of prehistoric Native American tattooing, and the actual antiquity of the practice both in the study area and in the continental United States remains unclear.

In this chapter I combine ethnohistorical sources and archaeological evidence to examine the material culture of prehistoric tattooing in the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. I begin with a discussion of the antiquity of tattooing in the region. Next, ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources are examined to identify descriptions of indigenous tattoo pigments and tools. That textual evidence is then compared to archaeological data from the region including rare formal identifications of prehistoric tattoo needles in an effort to recognize potential correlates. Finally, I discuss associations and context useful for identifying tattoo implements in the archaeological record.

Tattoos are widely regarded as morally neutral, and the decision to have them as carrying no ethical implications. The aim of this paper is to question this assumption. I argue that (at least some) decisions to have tattoos involve risks that are not merely prudential – they are normative. The argument starts with a thesis that the power we presently have over our lives is constrained by the need to respect our future selves. If we make a discretionary choice that disregards our future interests and preferences, then, under certain circumstances, we can be morally to blame. I argue that certain decisions to get tattoos fit this description. Therefore, getting some tattoos makes us blameworthy.

Theorized as a Bourdieusian field, this article examines changes inside the tattoo world resulting in the valuation of certain tattoo practices as art and some actors taking ‘fine art’ positions within it. The category of tattoo art is distinct from tattoo because it positions the practice away from its traditional historic moorings as a lowbrow craft and occupation requiring a rudimentary level of technical skill. In contrast, tattoo art is created and evaluated within academic discourses and traditional fine art ideologies that stress innovation, creativity, and exclusivity. In addition to mastery of the medium, that is, applying the tattoo to skin, tattoo artists create original works that qualify as artistic by art world conventions. This process of artification has changed the symbolic meanings and valuation of a practice, imbuing tattoo art with cultural legitimacy from the inside.

This article examines tattooing as an ancient and contemporary form of body inscription and modification. It frames the
popularity of tattooing in the Western World in relation to other modern body modifications and within the landscape of
consumer culture. Showing parallels between the motivations and meanings of contemporary tattoo practices, a historical
overview of tattoos in premodern and non-Western cultures is presented. The divergent ways in which scholars have
approached tattooing is examined, juxtaposing research in the behavioral sciences that links tattoos to deviant and antisocial
behaviors with ethnographic and social–scientific studies that place tattoos within cultural, symbolic, esthetic, and prosocial
frameworks.

This essay describes the potential for using ethnographic evidence and mummified tattooed skin to reflect on past therapeutic tattoo practice in the Arctic. It also considers the ways in which circumpolar concepts of disease emerged in relation to the agency of nonhuman entities. I argue that specific forms of curative tattooing offer interpretive models for the paleopathological and bioarchaeological study of care through an ontological framework of analysis.

The Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies, University College London, is hosting the Sacred Ink eLecture series, which focuses on body marking for ritualistic, aesthetic, and other benign purposes throughout the ages, from Ancient Egypt up to the present day. The online talks are free to attend and take place each Wednesday from 27 April until 1 June 2022 from 16:00 until 17:00 BST (London) via Zoom. The schedule, abstracts and registration details are found in the flyer.