1. Looking at tattooing as a non-linear, multicultural (global), intersectional practice with a discontinuous history 
    1. Intersection of religion (*identity)/ spirituality/ culture/ ritual (a practice repeated throughout time) and art
      1. Human agency and activity involved in the practice of tattooing 
    2. “Tattoo Renaissance:” rebirth or betterment of tattoos
    3. Binaries between inclusion and exclusion, internal/ external, invisible/ visible 
    4. Alfred Gell: “Wrapping in Images”
      1. “… Exteriorization of the interior which is simultaneously the interiorization of the exterior” 
    5. Anzieu: “The Skin Ego,” similar idea of tattoos as a communication between interior and exterior
      1. Skin allows for exchanges, but also protects the body; reveals the interior (ex. blushing) 
  2. Chapter 1: “Stigma and Tattoo”
    1. Greek and Roman stigma around “barbarians,” but that “stigmata” meant tattooing and now branding/ burning
      1. Exposure to tattoo: Egyptians, early Israelites, and Northern Neighbors (Southern Bulgaria and Turkey) 
      2. Clear etymological evidence about stigma meaning tattoo
    2. Cultural Significance of Stigma: decoration vs degradation
      1. Also sometimes a status marker 
      2. Persians often used it as a punitive function
        1. Greeks adopted this 
        2. Samians also would tattoo Athenian prisoners on their foreheads 
    3. Membership and Religious Function: sacred tattoos in Syria, the mouth of the Nile with the initials of God on their wrist 
    4. Long standing tradition of decoration and punishment as a binary of tattooing, bridged by human participation/ agency 
  3. Chapter 2: Function of tattooing in punitive situations specifically from late antiquity into the Byzantine period?
    1. Christianity as a force in administering this 
    2. Ambivalence of the signs: difference between intent and how it became understood 
    3. Edict of emperor Constantine that says punishment cannot mark the faces because “divine beauty cannot be disgraced”
    4. Function and form of penal tattoo (often on foreheads):
      1. Name of crime, name of the empire/ symbol of it (owl for Athens), name of punishment 
    5. Shifting meaning of symbols, transition from “defacing” into venerable living icons (inscription with the lord’s name)
      1. Christianity reconsiders suffering, turning it into sacrifice, martyrdom, bravery, etc. A lot of Christians used the “punishment” tattoos as a voluntary faithful practice 
  4. Chapter 3: Tattooing practices of the Celtics of the British Isles
    1. St Brigid 
    2. “Indelible mark made on the skin” 
    3. Saints: behavior dictated by the Bible or a written tradition (scripture), body becomes a place where scripture is inscribed
      1. Powerful idea of claiming identity through written language imprinted on the body 
    4. Absence of language to describe tattoos, make it incredibly hard to trace/ document