{"id":495,"date":"2023-09-12T20:51:22","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T00:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/?p=495"},"modified":"2023-09-12T20:51:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T00:51:22","slug":"reading-for-9-13-caplan-intro-chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/2023\/09\/12\/reading-for-9-13-caplan-intro-chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading for 9\/13: Caplan Intro – Chapter 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The introduction of Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History<\/em> immediately caught my attention from the way it very openly stated that the history of tattooing in Europe and America is greatly unknown. It is why Caplan describes the book as having a “less solid foundation on which to build” (xi). I realized after reading this sentence that I had never stopped to consider the history of tattoos my interest in them and their prevalence in the current times. The lack of concrete information also came as a surprise considering this prevalence. For me, tattoos and tattooing is just something that had always existed so to read that their origin is so obscure was, although I hate to be redundant, surprising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Chapter One and Two also surprised me, there was much of it that also felt understandable, or obvious, once I thought about it. I also lump these two chapters together because despite their differences and Chapter One being focused on the Greeks and Chapter Two being focused on the Romans, the chapters felt very similar in a way. It even felt redundant at times. This was another thing that at first made me curious, but then I thought about it and then I realized that so much of Roman culture is derived from and inspired by Greece so why would that exclude tattooing. Of course they are not exactly the same, but I felt that the general purpose for tattoos in the two cultures were the same: tattooing as a form of punishment. It made me wonder if such a history is why people today still correlate tattoos with crimes. Whether or not there is such influence, it’s curious to see how much tattoos are intertwined with public perception considering that in the past, the tattoos were there to mark who committed a crime and what it was that they did and this was so prevalent because it didn’t allow them to hide. It made their crime the first thing that people saw about them. People don’t typically tattoo a crime that they committed onto themselves however, an abundance of tattoos or tattoos in a highly visible place, like the forehead, are still viewed as signs of a person who committed a crime. In other words, even though the tattoo has changed, their perception has not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be completely honest, I found Chapter Three to be much more interesting than Chapter One and Two. This is partially due to the fact that I find the end result of these studies ultimately being a who knows situation funny, but it is also because of the prominence of Celtic symbols in tattooing. More specifically the Celtic knot is such a prominent symbol in tattooing and it’s an image that many people have on their bodies and its popularity had made me believe that there was a connection between the Celts and tattooing so reading this chapter and seeing that it is pretty much unknown as to whether or not tattooing held prominence in their culture made me reconsider popular modern tattoos. What I am trying to say is that this chapter made me consider the meaning behind some modern day tattoos as well as question how certain images became popular in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final chapter we had to read was Chapter Four. Call me biased (since I’m presenting Chapter Four), but I thought Chapter Four was the most interesting out of everything we had to read so far. The connection between tattoos and the occult and magic is nothing new to me, but I hadn’t realized how far back that connection had extended. It’s always curious to see how ideas from this time translate to the present considering people as described in this chapter would mark themselves as a way of imbuing themselves with better traits, a form of empowerment if you will, and empowerment is one of the reasons why people get tattoos today. There is, of course, a difference in how deep that belief goes, one being religious and the other being a way to appease oneself. In addition to this, although tattoos were not as explicitly discussed in this chapter, it was intriguing to see how such marks, despite their impermanence, can all be seen as precedents for tattoos and tattooing in England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The introduction of Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History immediately caught my attention from the way it very openly stated that the history of tattooing in Europe and America is greatly unknown. It is why Caplan describes the book as having a “less solid foundation on which to build” (xi). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11790,"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\/495"}],"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\/11790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar473-fall2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}