The History Of Tattooing

This engrossing 1925 survey offers one of the most complete histories of world tattoo practices. Written during an era when colonial authorities had all but eliminated indigenous tattooing, it discusses their significance in terms of religious beliefs and social status. This Dover edition features a new selection of 80 images from vanishing cultures.

The human desire to adorn the body is universal and timeless. While specific forms of body decoration and the motivations for them vary by region, culture, and era, all human societies have engaged in practices designed to augment and enhance people’s natural appearance. Tattooing, the process of inserting pigment into the skin to create permanent designs and patterns, is one of the most widespread forms of body art and was practiced by ancient cultures throughout the world, with tattoos appearing on human mummies by 3200 BCE. Ancient Ink, the first book dedicated to the archaeological study of tattooing, presents new, globe-spanning research examining tattooed human remains, tattoo tools, and ancient art. Connecting ancient body art traditions to modern culture through Indigenous communities and the work of contemporary tattoo artists, the volume’s contributors reveal the antiquity, durability, and significance of body decoration, illuminating how different societies have used their skin to construct their identities.

The popularity of tattoos today is a revival of a practice begun in the late eighteenth century, when Westerners first made contact with the native peoples of the Pacific. The term ‘tattoo’ entered Europe with the publication of Captain Cook’s voyages in the 1770s, and Pacific tattoos became fashionable in the West as sailors, whalers and explorers brought home tattoos from Tahiti, the Marquesas, New Zealand and Polynesia. In recent years these early contacts have been revived, as native tattooists from Oceania have begun tattooing non-Polynesians in Europe, the USA and elsewhere. Tattoo is both a fascinating book about these early Oceanic–European exchanges, that also documents developments up to the present day, and the first to look at the history of tattooing in Oceania itself. Documenting these complex cultural interactions in the first part of the book, the authors move from issues of encounter, representation and exchange to the interventions of missionaries and the colonial state in local tattoo practices. Highly illustrated with many previously unseen images, for example the original voyage sketches of the first Russian circumnavigation of 1803–6, this is a fascinating account of early tattooing and cultural exchange in Oceania, and will appeal to the wide audience interested in the history of tattooing.

For thousands of years, Native Americans 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. This book offers an examination into the antiquity, meaning, and significance of Native American tattooing in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains.--Publisher description.

Tattoo Histories is an edited volume which analyses and discusses the relevance of tattooing in the socio-cultural construction of bodies, boundaries, and identities, among both individuals and groups. Its interdisciplinary approach facilitates historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Rather than presenting a universal, essentialized history of tattooing, the volume’s objective is to focus on the entangled and transcultural histories, narratives, and practices related to tattoos. Contributions stem from various fields, including Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Linguistics, Media and Literary Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Sociology. They advance the current endeavour on the part of tattoo scholars to challenge Eurocentric and North American biases prevalent in much of tattoo research, by including various analyses based in locations such as Malaysia, Israel, East Africa, and India. The thematic focus is on the transformative capacity of tattoos and tattooing, with regard to the social construction of bodies and subjectivity; the (re-)creation of social relationships through the definition of (non-)tattooed others; the formation and consolidation of group identities, traditions, and authenticity; and the conceptualization of art and its relevance to tattoo artist–tattooee relations.

Say "body modifications" and most people think of tattoos and piercings. They associate these mainly with the urban primitives of the 1980s to today and with primitive tribes. In fact, as this fascinating book shows, body mods have been on the scene since ancient times, traceable as far back as 1.5 million years, and they also encompass sacrification, branding, and implants. Professor John Rush outlines the processes and procedures of these radical physical alterations, showing their function as rites of passage, group identifiers, and mechanisms of social control. He explores the use of pain for spiritual purposes, such as purging sin and guilt, and examines the phenomenon of accidental cuts and punctures as individual events with sometimes profound implications for group survival. Spiritual Tattoo finds a remarkable consistency in body modifications from prehistory to the present, suggesting the importance of the body as a sacred geography from both social and psychological points of view.