Episode 6

An Inkling of Tattoo History

We POKE AROUND the subject of tattoos. What are the oldest ones? What do they mean? How were they made? This one gets under our skin.

To learn more about tattoos and tattooing through the ages: 

 

Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos (The Siberian Times)

Inside the World’s Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims (Atlas Obscura)

Algeria's Tattoos: Myths and Truths (Pulitzer Center)

Inked Heritage: Berber Women’s Tattoos In Algeria (HuffPo)

Vegetius' De re militari

Can Tattoos Be Medicinal? (Smithsonian.com)

Scientists Have Mapped All of Ötzi the Iceman’s 61 Tattoos (Discover)

Skin and Bone (Colin Dale, tattoo artist)

FYI: What Makes Tattoos Permanent? (Popular Science)

Deter-Wolf, Aaron; Robitaille, Benoît; Krutak, Lars; Galliot, Sébastien (February 2016). "The World's Oldest Tattoos". Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 5: 19–24.

Gilbert, Steve (2000). Tattoo history: A source book (Paperback). New York, NY: Juno Books. ISBN 978-1-890451-06-6. Retrieved 10 July 2015.


Jones, C. P. (1987). "Stigma: Tattooing and branding in Graeco-Roman antiquity". Journal of Roman Studies. 77: 139–155.


Samadellia et al., (2016) Complete mapping of the tattoos of the 5300-year-old Tyrolean

Iceman. Journal of Cultural Heritage 16: 753-758

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.