Tattoo is one of the oldest forms of body modification. However, too caught up in the aesthetics of tattooing, I have never really wondered about the history of tattooing, especially with Western tattoos. According to Jane Caplan in the introduction, there is evidence that supports the pre-existing practice of tattooing but finding the origin of it in Europe is hard to pinpoint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chapter 2 and 3 felt very similar. Like how the Romans adopted much of what the Greeks’ culture. Similarly to how the Greeks tattooed prisoners with their crime, the Romans did the same. However this was not the only purpose of tattooing. There was a lot of intertwine between tattooing and religion and its other functions: mark of status, decoration, as well as, unknown functions within certain groups of people and cultures. Overall, the act of getting tattooed and carrying a tattoo was mostly negative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is interesting to see how far back the history of tattooing is but also to see the function that it served. One comparison that really caught my attention was “The Settling of the Manor of Tara”. The saints themselves were the book and thus their skin was the manuscript. And so the idea that when the saints died, the skin was collected and ‘stitched together’ like a manuscript. A little grotesque but I thought it was the most interesting part of this chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the Celtics, history was not properly documented through writing making it unknown if there is a connection between the symbols and the actual practice of tattooing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where did tattooing in the Western World originate? Chapter 4 asks of the origin of tattooing inside of England. It is possible it came from outside cultures, the indigenous people or even from someplace within England? But according to the reading because of unreliable documentation, it is hard to pinpoint it to a specific time or place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought that magic being a part of the larger history of tattooing was truly something I wouldn’t have guessed. When the Church of England became unreliable to the people, they turned to magic. Magic was about the virtues in the things made by god and exploring the purer forms created by god. One belief they had was that every being was made with a virtue or multiple virtues from god. For example a cock, like the chicken, represented confidence. So to be more confident, one would take the the innards of the animal and keep it on the body to be connected and imbued with the confidence or virtue of the animal. Symbols were a large part of the magic. Since obtaining parts of an animal wasn’t reliant, the used symbols. Celestial symbols were believed to have power that would help change their fate in the earthly world and the after life. However these markings were mostly on cloth and didn’t leave permanent marks on their body. So, celestial magic wasn’t fully regarded as tattooing because of it didn’t fully penetrate the skin to leave a permanent mark. But it is also important because of the belief and power behind the symbolic markings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nobody really knows the origin of the tattoos but magic in England played a culturally significant role in symbolic markings and the meaning and belief behind the inked markings. Many modern people with tattoos use it in a similar way to empower themselves, imbed some virtues, and have all sorts of meaning to the the markings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tattoo is one of the oldest forms of body modification. However, too caught up in the aesthetics of tattooing, I have never really wondered about the history of tattooing, especially with Western tattoos. According to Jane Caplan in the introduction, there is evidence that supports the pre-existing practice of tattooing but finding the origin of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11866,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11866"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}