Tattoos and Body Modifications in AntiquityProceedings of the sessions at the EAA annual meetings in The Hague and Oslo, 2010/11

edited byPhilippe Della CasaConstanze Witt

Zurich Studies in ArchaeologyVol. 9_2013

Impressum

HerausgeberUniversität ZürichAbt. Ur- und FrühgeschichteKarl-Schmid-Str. 4, CH 8006 Zürich www.prehist.uzh.ch

Produktion Chronos Verlag

Design & Layout Elisabeth Hefti, Juliet Manning

DruckFreiburger Graphische Betriebe fgb

© Texte: Autor/innen© Bilder: Autor/innen

ISBN x-xxxx-xxxx-x

Portrait of George TihotiTihoti the tattooist came to Huahine from the Marquesas Islands and his personal tattoos as well as his tattoo designs in his prac-tice are traditional designs from the Marquesan archipelago. This portrait shows him in his normal daily dress at that time, and with a pareo wrapped around his waist. Photo by Phillip Hofstetter, California State University, East Bay.

Table of Contents

5 Aspects of Embodiment – Tattoos and Body Modifications in Antiquity

Philippe Della Casa & Constanze Witt

9 Matters of Identity: Body, Dress and Markers in Social Context

Philippe Della Casa

15 The Material Culture and Middle Stone Age Origins of Ancient Tattooing

Aaron Deter-Wolf

27 The Power to Cure: A Brief History of Therapeutic Tattooing

Lars Krutak

35 Flint, Bone, and Thorns: Using Ethnohistorical Data, Experimental Archaeology,

and Microscopy to Examine Ancient Tattooing in Eastern North America

Aaron Deter-Wolf & Tanya M. Peres

49 Body Modification at Paracas Necropolis, South Coast of Peru, ca. 2000 BP

Elsa Tomasto Cagigao, Ann Peters, Mellisa Lund & Alberto Ayarza

59 Interpreting the tattoos on a 700-year-old mummy from South America

Heather Gill-Frerking, Anna-Maria Begerock & Wilfried Rosendahl

67 Bronze Age Tattoos: Sympathetic Magic or Decoration?

Natalia. I. Shishlina, E. V. Belkevich & A. N. Usachuk

75 One More Culture with Ancient Tattoo Tradition in Southern Siberia:

Tattoos on a Mummy from the Oglakhty Burial Ground, 3rd-4th century AD

Svetlana V. Pankova

89 Tattoos from Mummies of the Pazyryk Culture

Karina Iwe

97 The Tattoo System in the Ancient Iranian World

Sergey A. Yatsenko

103 Intentional Cranial Deformation: Bioarchaeological Recognition of Social Identity

in Iron Age Sargat Culture

Svetlana Sharapova

115 Roman Cosmetics Revisited: Facial Modification and Identity

Rhiannon Y Orizaga

3

27

The Power to Cure: A Brief History of Therapeutic Tattooing Lars Krutak

Repatriation Office, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, MRC 138, P.O. Box 37012,

10th & Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20013, USA, krutakl@si.edu

For thousands of years, peoples around the world have practiced tattooing because of its perceived efficacy as a medi-

cinal therapy. As a form of medical treatment, tattoo thus exposed specific body locations where preventive, curative,

and spiritualistic medicine was practiced. Drawing on the palaeopathological record of tattooed mummies and ethno-

graphic research, this paper will explore the indelible legacy of therapeutic corporeal marking to reveal the complex

system of tools, techniques, and beliefs by which ancient and more recent cultures attempted to control their bodies,

lives, and experiences. Keywords: Tattooing, Medicinal Praxis, Indigenous Peoples, Mummies, Corporeality

1. Introduction

Throughout human history, ancient peoples of the world

developed techniques to maintain and restore health

through the prevention and treatment of illness. From trep-

anation to lancing, herbalism to acupuncture, prehistoric

medicinal practitioners incorporated a variety of philo-

sophical and practical solutions in their attempts to promote

the longevity and well-being of their clients in the face of

uncertain survival.

One of the least understood of these health care practi-

ces was therapeutic tattooing, or the insertion of permanent

colouring agents into the dermis to induce healing. Medi-

cinal tattooing took many forms, but the pigments employed

throughout time were remarkably similar (Krutak 2012,

148), indicating that they had perceived, if not real, curative

values.

In this paper I explore the relatively unstudied phe-

nomenon of therapeutic tattooing. For over five millennia,

if not longer, people across the globe have employed this

form of medicinal marking as a method to alleviate bodily

ills and pathological complaints; ailments that sometimes

were traced to the malevolent actions of spirits upon the

body. Drawing on the palaeopathological record of tattooed

mummies and ethnographic research in the Arctic (Krutak

1998ab; 1999; 2007; 2009), the Philippines (Krutak 2010), and

Sarawak, this survey documents the enduring cultural herit-

age of tattoo-puncture as a form of medical therapy.

2. Frozen in Ice: Ötzi

In 1991, a Neolithic “Iceman” some 5300 years old was dis-

covered in the Tyrolean Alps with tattoos preserved upon

his mummified skin. Later dubbed “Ötzi,” the Iceman’s tat-

toos are significant because they provide the earliest human

evidence of therapeutic tattooing in the world. Small linear

incisions besmirched with bluish-black carbon pigments

Figure 1. The 5300-year-old Iceman is the oldest known human to have worn medicinal tattoos akin to acupuncture. Redrawn after Spindler (1994, 172).

Philippe Della Casa & Constanze Witt (eds) Tattoos and Body Modifications in Antiquity. Proceedings of the sessions at the EAA annual meetings in The Hague and Oslo, 2010/11. Zurich Studies in Archaeology vol. 9, 2013, 27-34.

28

were placed at precise locations on the body correspond-

ing to major joint articulations. Radiographic analyses of the

Iceman’s corpse revealed considerable arthrosis in many of

the same regions (e.g. lower back or lumbar spine, hip joints,

knee joints, and ankle joints) where the tattoos were applied

(Zur Nedden & Wicke 1992). Coupled with the fact that 80%

of these tattoo positions correspond to classical acupuncture

points employed to treat rheumatic illness (Reuters 1998), it

seems very likely that these tattoo-punctures almost cer-

tainly had the purpose of relieving the degenerative effects

of Ötzi’s condition (Fig. 1).

It has been proposed that Ötzi’s indelible treatments

were repeated over time, because many of the Iceman’s

5300-year-old tattoos are exceedingly dark, suggesting mul-

tiple applications to the same loci (Dario Piombino-Mas-

cali, personal communication, 2010). One of these tattooed

regions (i.e. the lumbar spine) must have been punctured

by another individual, because the Iceman would not have

been able to reach it with precision. The Iceman also pos-

sessed two lines of tattooing around one of his wrists.

Other researchers have added to the list of Ötzi’s in-

delible medical therapeutics. Dorfer et al. (1999) indicated

that markings on the mummy’s back and right leg were

positioned on the gall bladder, spleen, liver, and stomach

acupuncture meridians. Meridians are specific pathways

that connect the internal organs with specific points that

are located either on the epidermis, often in close proximity

to nerves and blood vessels. The meridians and points cited

by Dorfer et al. (1999) are utilized by acupuncturists today

to treat abdominal disorders. Other recent scientific findings

revealed that the Iceman suffered from whipworms in his

colon (Aspöck et al. 1996). The discovery of a large amount of

charcoal in that organ probably demonstrated an attempt at

curing the malady through an oral dose (Oeggel 1998, cited

in Dorfer et al. 1999).

3. Shaman vs. Acupuncturist

Across the animistic world, the shaman’s role in medicinal

practice closely paralleled that of the Chinese acupuncturist.

Both were consulted to identify the causes of disease by dif-

ferentiation of symptoms and signs, to provide suitable treat-

ments. In acupuncture, pathogenic forces are thought to

invade the human body from the exterior via the mouth,

nose or body surfaces and from there they travel along

specific pathways or meridians into the organ system. The

resultant maladies are called exogenous diseases. In circum-

polar cultures, the primary factor determining sickness was

the intrusion of an evil spirit from outside the body into one

of the “limb souls” or primary limb joints of the afflicted indi-

vidual (Krutak 1998a; 1999). These joints ultimately served as

the vehicular “highways” which malevolent entities travelled

to enter the human body and injure it. Consequently, and as

a form of spiritual-medicinal practice, indigenous peoples

like the Yupiget of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, were tattooed

on specific joints with an apotropaic pigment comprised of

soot, urine, seal oil, and sometimes graphite to shut down

these pathways, especially after the death of a community

member, adversary, or large game animal (Fig. 2).

Up until the turn of the twentieth century, the Yupiget

characterized death as a dangerous time in which the liv-

ing could become possessed by the “shade” or malevolent

spirit of the deceased (Krutak 1998a, 32). A spirit of the dead

was believed to linger for some time in the vicinity of its for-

mer village and body. Though not visible to all, the shade

was conceived as an absolute material double of the corpse.

Because pallbearers were in direct contact with the recently

deceased, they were ritually tattooed at their primary joints

– shoulders, elbows, hip, wrist, knee, ankle, neck, and waist

– to repel the ethereal entity from causing a variety of sick-

nesses, including disordered behaviour, possession, fever,

convulsions, and severe rheumatism in the joints eventually

resulting in death (Krutak 1999).

Similarly, nearly every attribute of the human dead

was also believed to be equally characteristic of the ani-

mal dead, as the spirit of every animal was understood to

possess semi-human form. Men, and more rarely women,

were tattooed on St. Lawrence Island when they killed a seal,

polar bear, or harpooned a bowhead whale for the first time.

Like the tattoo of the pallbearer, “first-kill” tattoos (kakileq)

consisted of small dots that were stitched into the skin with

needle and sinew thread at the convergence of the primary

joints (Krutak 1998a, 34). The application of these tattoos im-

peded future instances of spirit possession and debilitating

arthrosis at these vulnerable passages.

When these findings are coupled with a reconstruc-

tion of a 2500-year-old mummy from the Pazyryk culture

of Siberia, excavated by Sergei Rudenko in 1947-48, evi-

dence for therapeutic tattooing becomes more compel-

ling. Rudenko found very fine needles in Pazyryrk burials,

and indicated that these implements may have been used

in Pazyryk therapeutic tattooing (Rudenko 1970, 112). This

Pazyryk “chief” bore dot-shaped tattoos on either side of the

lumbar spine and on the right ankle, locations that Krutak

(1998ab) first suggested were related to classical acupunc-

ture points utilized to relieve various ailments, like lumbago

Figure 2. Joint-tattooing of the St. Lawrence Island Yupiget. Drawing by Mark Planisek, published in Krutak (2007, 153).

29

and rheumatism. With regards to associated practices per-

formed on St. Lawrence Island, the location of the chief’s

tattoos directly correspond to those applied during Yupiget

funeral ceremonies and first-kill observations. Of course, the

Pazyryk chief’s joint tattoos closely parallel those seen on the

Iceman himself (Fig. 3).

Further analysis of traditional St. Lawrence Island tat-

too practices suggests that several tattooed areas on the

body outside of the primary limb joints directly overlapped

with classical acupuncture points (Krutak 1999, 233-242). In

the recent past, the Yupiget knew about these parallels. For

example, one elder explained that one of the areas tattoos

were placed upon coincides with the acupuncture point

yang pai – utilized to remedy frontal headache and pain

in the eye: “Grandparents, when they were pricking that

[point when they] hurt from headache, when [they] thought

that [the] eyes are bothering you[ …] they use acupuncture”

(Krutak 1999, 232). Of course, this remedy is quite ancient.

One of the earliest known references to acupuncture anal-

gesia of this kind is in a legend about Hua To (~A.D. 110-207),

the first-known Chinese surgeon, who used acupuncture for

headache (Chu 1979, 2).

The Aleuts or Unangan of the Aleutian Archipelago of

Alaska also utilized acupuncture in medical therapy to re-

lease “bad airs” (Marsh & Laughlin 1956, 40). Stone lancets

were used to pierce specific areas of the dermis, and this

therapy was resorted to in cases of headache, eye disor-

ders, colics, and lumbago (Marsh & Laughlin 1956). Like the

Yupiget, the Unangan tattoo-punctured to relieve aching

joints. The anthropologist Margaret Lantis (1984, 174) ob-

served that Atka Islanders “moistened thread covered with

gunpowder (probably soot in former times) sew[ing] through

the pinched-up skin near an aching joint or across the back

over a region of pain.”

Apparently, the efficacy of this potent medical technol-

ogy was very great because the Ainu of Japan also tattooed to

relieve rheumatism and sprains (Kodama 1970, 123-124) (Fig.

4), as did several indigenous California tribes like the Yuki

(Essene 1942, 59) and Miwok who employed the practice “for

the relief of rheumatic and chronic pains,” and the tattooing

“done immediately over the painful spot” with a pigment of

charred white sage (Artemesia ludoviciana) (Merriam 1966,

349; see also Barrett & Gifford 1933, 224). Interestingly, the

Ainu, Yuki, and Miwok similarly employed flint or obsidian

lancets to cut in these kinds of medicinal tattoos.

The Chippewa of the Great Lakes region of North

America also positioned tattoos over painful areas to cure

muscular pains, “such as rheumatism, dislocated joints,

and backache” (Hilger 1951, 93). They also tattooed to cure

goitre, as did the Kalinga and other indigenous peoples of

the Philippine Cordilleras who suffered from goitrous afflic-

tions (Jenks 1905, 189; Krutak 2010, 183, 220-221) (Fig. 5). The

Chippewa utilized wooden batons tipped with needles to

prick-in their medicinal tattoos, whereas the Kalinga hand-

tapped curative markings into the skin.

Kindred forms of indelible acupuncture-like therapy

have been documented in Canada and coastal Greenland.

For example, the Teetl’it Gwich’in of the Peel River employed

Figure 3 (left). The nomadic Pazyryk people ruled the Siberian steppes from the sixth through the second centuries B.C. A 2500-year-old mummy of a tribal chieftain sported elaborate zoomorphic and medicinal tattoos on his spine and ankle that were probably applied to cure rheumatic complaints. Ar-chaeological evidence supports that the Pazyryk probably employed methods of skin-stitching and pricking to create their beautiful tattoos. Because Chi-nese silk has been found in several Pazyryk burials, direct or indirect contact occurred between the two cultures over two-thousand years ago. Redrawn after Spindler (1994, 173).

Figure 4 (below). Ainu therapeutic tattoos that were incised into the skin with a lancet. Redrawn after Kodama (1970, 123).

30

skin-stitched tattoos for facial paralysis that resulted from

stroke (Osgood 1936, 99). In Greenland, archaeological evi-

dence in the form of tattooed mummies indicates that facial

marking of a similar medicinal nature was part of the island’s

cultural history (Krutak 1999, 2009). Radiocarbon dated to the

fifteenth century A.D., the mummies of Qilakitsoq have re-

vealed that a conscious, exacting attempt was made to place

dot-motif tattoos at important facial points. Given that these

dot-motif tattoos are suggestive of acupuncture points, and

coupled with the fact that each actually designates a “clas-

sical acupuncture point”, cultural affinity must be suggested.

Besides, in the late nineteenth century Danish ethnographer

Gustav Holm (1914, 29) reported that Greenlanders “now and

then […] resort to tattooing in cases of sickness.” Although

we are not entirely certain if Holm was specifically refer-

ring to tattoo-puncture in his statement, several intriguing

1500-year-old ivory doll-heads excavated from St. Lawrence

Island illustrate ancient continuity spanning thousands of

miles and hundreds of years (Krutak 2007, 172).

Outside of these related medicinal practices, it should

be noted that tattooing was documented in Native North

America as a treatment for a variety of other medical com-

plaints, including heart disease (Deg Hit’an), lack of mother’s

milk (Chugach Eskimo), consumption (Miwok), and tooth-

ache (Iroquois) (Barrett & Gifford 1933, 224; Birket-Smith

1953, 69; Lafitau 1977 [1724], 35; Osgood 1936, 73). But what

can be summarized from the previous discussion is that

Neolithic, Chinese, Yupiget, Pazyryk, Unangan, Ainu, Native

North American, Philippine Cordilleran, and Greenlandic

peoples believed that certain ailments of the body, whether

internal or external, were reflected at specific loci on the sur-

face of the skin or just below it. Thus, relieving excess pres-

sure at primary joints and specific dermic points enabled the

body to regain its former homeostasis or harmony within

Figure 5. Kalinga goiter tattooing. Photograph Lars Krutak.

31

and outside of itself. As one can imagine, then, it is believed

that there are many possible relationships and connections

between organs, points, joints, and tattoos.

4. Mummies from South American Sands

Hidden in shifting sands along the coastal valleys of south-

ern Peru and northern Chile, mummies by the thousands

have been discovered – some bearing intricate tattoos on

their desiccated skins. Of the many ancient cultures that in-

habited and tattooed in the region, the Chimú (A.D. 1100-

1470) were perhaps the most heavily and elaborately marked

of all. The exquisite designs tattooed into once living flesh,

and carved into silver, gold, and wooden burial objects, sug-

gests that the body’s integument was perceived as a kind of

double-sided garment that concealed and projected personal

power, prestige, and identity across the plane of the living

and the dead (Krutak 2007, 185).

Paleopathological studies of Chimú mummies indicate

that the practice of tattooing was quite common among both

males and females (Allison et al. 1981). In some coastal settle-

ments, it has been estimated that at least thirty per cent of

the population may have been tattooed (Allison 1996, 127).

Chimú tattooists applied their tattoo pigments with

various types of fine needles (fishbone, parrot quill, spiny

conch), each of which have been found in mummy bur-

ials (Allison et al. 1981, 221). Tattoos were pricked-in and also

skin-stitched, a technique similar to the “facial embroidery”

of the Yupiget and other Arctic peoples (Allison et al. 1981,

221). It has been suggested that women may have been the

primary tattooists when areas of skin were stitched with pig-

ment (Krutak 2007, 187). Their expert knowledge of working

animal skins and hides would certainly have facilitated the

need for precision when piercing the human epidermis with

tattoos.

Recently, Pabst et al. (2010) reinvestigated a tattooed

1000-year-old mummy discovered at Chiribaya Alta in

southern Peru, a corpse first uncovered in 1990 near Ilo (Fig.

6A & 6B). This mummy was not Chimú, rather this individ-

ual was probably a member of the Tiwanaku culture (Allison

cited in Krutak 2007, 193). Pabst et al. (2010) have established

that the ancient woman was tattooed with two different

organic pigments. One of these “dying particles” (i.e., soot

carbon) assumed a more rounded shape and comprised the

woman’s decorative tattoos (hands, leg), whilst the other (i.e.,

charcoal from an unidentified pyrolysed plant material) was

more linear in form (Pabst et al. 2010, 3258) and comprised

the circular tattoos on her neck. These partially overlapping

circles, twelve in all, were tattooed upon the dorsal aspect of

the neck and were found to align with acupuncture points

utilized today to relieve neck and head discomfort.

Upon review, however, both pigments studied by Pabst

et al. (2010) are essentially the same: they are forms of car-

bonized material. One plausible candidate for the unidenti-

fied pyrolysed plant material is genipap or jagua fruit (huito);

a substance that should be examined for as tattoo pigment

in future mummy studies of this region. In the late 1980s,

Peruvian archaeologists conducted a salvage operation ap-

proximately one hundred miles north of Lima at the site

of Vegueta in the Huaura Valley and discovered a cache of

mummies dating to the early Chimú period. This remark-

able find, which has yet to be published (Thomas Pozorski,

personal communication, 2004), yielded several tattooed

mummies dating to A.D. 1100; each clutching the dried-up

fruit of the genipap (Genipa Americana L.) in the palm of its

outstretched hand (Knol 1990).

Juices of the green, immature fruits of the genipap

have been and continue to be used as black body paint and

are incorporated into tattoo pigment by historic and con-

temporary indigenes of South America (Erikson 1999, 391;

Karsten 1926, 13, 39, 192; Lévi-Strauss 1970, 166; Nimuendajú

1948a, 287; 1948b, 309; Romanov 2004, 74; von den Steinen

1899, 32-33). Among some groups, the colouring substance

was highly esteemed because it was believed to repel incor-

poreal spirits (Karsten 1926, 13, 29, 63, 232). This was espe-

cially true of the headhunting Shuar (Jívaro) and Mundu-

rucú who painted themselves and their trophy heads with

genipap to protect the victor from the spirit of the deceased

(Horton 1948, 278; Karsten 1923, 18, 25, 38-39, 43-48; Rivet

1907-08, 248).

Genipap also is the source of various medicinal prod-

ucts used to treat arthritis, venereal sores, corneal opacities,

stomach ulcers, and uterine cancer in Amazonia (Castner

et al. 1998, 55; Morton 1987, 443). Sometimes it is used as an

abortifacient (Duke & Vasquez 1994, 79). In Central Amer-

ica, the pulverized seeds, or a decoction of its flowers, are

commonly given as a febrifuge (Castner et al. 1998, 55; Mor-

Figure 6A-B. Tattoos found on the neck of a Chiribaya Alta mummy. Their alignment with acupuncture points and meridians possibly indicates a medicinal function. Redrawn after Spindler, published in Dorfer et al. (1999, 1024). Photograph courtesy J. Marvin Allison.

A B

32

Figures 7A-C. Kayan therapeutic tattoos. Photographs Lars Krutak. A

ton 1987, 443), and in Guatemala, indigenous peoples “carry

the fruits in their hands in the belief that this will provide

protection from disease and ill-fortune” (Morton 1987, 443).

Perhaps the genipap symbolized something similar for the

Chimú people of the Huaura Valley, a fundamental belief that

the medicinal plant afforded a form of efficacious protection

against evil influences encountered in life as well as in death.

5. Pigment Power

Through several marked examples, it has been demonstrated

that ancient peoples the world over utilized carbonized

charcoal products to create medicinal tattoos. The therapeutic

efficacy of this organic substance also compelled the Iceman

to orally ingest it in an attempt to cure abdominal complaints

that arose from whipworm infestation.

By nature, charcoal is sterile from the high degree of

heat to which it has been subjected. Charcoal also is unique

because it adsorbs – through electrical attraction – toxins

to the surface of its particles. Charcoal has been shown to

adsorb infectious bacteria (Beckett et al. 1980) and uric acid

(Shapiro 1991): or more specifically those salts derived from

urate crystals that sometimes become deposited in tissues of

the body, especially the joints (i.e., synovial fluid and synovial

lining), as a result of arthritis or gout. Charcoal poultices also

have proven effective in cleaning persistent wounds (Beckett

et al. 1980) and curing joint sprains (Thrash & Thrash 1981)

because they exert anti-inflammatory properties.

In January 2011, the author conducted field research

among the indigenous Kayan of Sarawak (Malaysian Bor-

neo). The Kayan are a Malayo-Polynesian people and one

B

of many Orang Ulu or “upriver” groups inhabiting the cen-

tral districts of Sarawak along the Baram, Rejang and Bintulu

rivers. Until the early 1960s, the Kayan practiced extremely

elaborate forms of tattooing that were conducted by female

practitioners who worked under the protection and tutelage

of a spiritual patron (Krutak 2007, 85). Today, traditional tat-

tooing practices associated with religious and spiritual cul-

ture are no longer practiced.

However, some families continue to apply therapeutic

tattoos to injured joints and sprains via the traditional

technique of hand-tapping (Fig. 7A-C). The tattoo oper-

ator I met inherited her position and tattooing implements

from her mother, who was another medicinal tattooist.

Tattoo pigments were always carbonized wood charcoal,

and no specific variety was mentioned as being preferred

over others. Many longhouse members of the community,

including the headman, his wife, and dozens of other indi-

viduals sported indelible stains located at primary limb joints:

knee, ankle, wrist, and elbow. In some cases, the therapeutic

markings resembled a tattooed band or bracelet encircling

the wrist, just like that worn by the Iceman. Oftentimes, if

a particular limb was injured on more than one occasion,

treatment was repeated at the same loci. Several community

members displayed evidence of multiple tattoo applications.

All informants reported that this form of indelible therapy

was extremely efficacious in the treatment of sprains. After

the initial tattoo application, swelling decreased and full mo-

bility was restored to injured areas within one week.

Taken together, the charcoal infused pigments of the

Kayan either activated healing power, marked the locations

for (re)application of acupressure or acupuncture treatments

(cf. Dorfer et al. 1999, 1025), or performed both functions

simultaneously. Whatever the purpose or result, the find-

ings presented here provide strong evidence that this form

of tattoo-puncture therapy is quite ancient, and continues to

be practiced by the Kayan some 5300 years after the earliest

reported instance, that of the Iceman.

33

6. Summary

For more than five millennia, tattooing has been a perma-

nent part of medicinal culture the world over. Far from

being either an arcane or quotidian medical technique, tat-

tooing worked to help negotiate humanity’s relationship

with the body as it continually struggled with those physio-

logical and spiritual processes that threatened to injure and

destroy it. Because corporeal marking allowed individuals to

gain control over the boundaries and passages of their bod-

ies, to which and from which sickness and health flowed, it

was enmeshed in a therapeutic complex of personal power

and magic illustrating communal and individual desires and

fears. Thus, medicinal tattooing provided the skin with a sec-

C

ondary covering that was fundamental in protecting it from

the natural and supernatural elements of its surrounding en-

vironment, while also interactively shaping it by firmly an-

choring local indigenous values on the epidermis for all to see.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the people of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, and theKayan community members of Uma Bawang longhouse, SungaiAsap, Sarawak, for sharing their knowledge of traditional and thera-peutic tattooing practices. Fieldwork amongst the Kayan wouldnot have been possible without a generous grant from the DanieleAgostino Derossi Foundation and translation provided by the alwaysgenerous Lyvian Hulo Luhat.

34

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