Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing ed. by Lars Krutak and Aaron Deter-Wolf

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing ed. by Lars Krutak and Aaron Deter-Wolf Erica Steiner Krutak, Lars, and Aaron Deter-Wolf, eds, Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing, Seattle, The University of Washington Press, 2018; hardback; xii, 354; 24 colour plates, 157 b/w illustrations, 7 maps, 2 tables; R.R.P. US $60.00; ISBN 9780295742823. Just as tattooing has become more acceptable and visible within mainstream Western society over the last couple of decades, academic studies of tattooing, encompassing a variety of methodological approaches to investigating both contemporary and historical practices, have similarly increased. The archaeological approach is primarily concerned with the physical evidence for tattooing within the material record: evidence of tools and pigments, of representations of tattooing, and of course tattooed human remains. The editors of this volume, Lars Krutak and Aaron Deter-Wolf, have aimed for this to be ‘the first book dedicated to the archaeological study of tattooing [… which is not] region specific, [does not] contain dated or suspect scholarship [… and is not] overly academic and unapproachable for the general public’ (p. 4) . Within these admirable parameters, Ancient Ink is divided into three unevenly weighted parts. Part 1, ‘Skin’, focuses on tattooed human remains in whole and in part; Part 2, ‘Tools’, focuses on the archaeological identification of tattooing tools and toolkits; and Part 3, ‘Art’, discusses how ancient societies represented their tattooed selves. However, in addition to this tripartite division, Ancient Ink is also evenly split between what can be termed ‘archaeological’ and ‘experimental’ chapters. Each of the archaeological chapters provides an excellent scholarly overview of various physical, historical, and iconographic forms of evidence for tattooing within its own geographical focus. Uniquely, each of these is then followed by an experimental chapter that discusses either the same designs or the same culture within the context of modern tattooing revival or other experimental practices. Each experimental chapter is co-authored by at least one of the coeditors, providing this book with not just a clear stylistic continuity throughout, but also highlighting the real-world continuity of various tattooing traditions. The editors’ approach is to be commended, as it effectively meets one of their stated aims, ‘bridging the gap between academic and popular works on tattooing’ (4). Krutak and Deter-Wolf make the comment in their introduction that ‘tattooing is an almost universal human tradition’ (p. 8), an assessment evident through the geographical extent of historical tattooing and the demonstrably fundamental transcultural similarities of tattooing technology, design, and purpose. But in considering whether Ancient Ink fulfils this statement of global relevance, it is useful to reflect on how various historical and contemporary tattooing cultures have been both over- and under-represented by the editors. With six chapters, the historically culturally contiguous zone from the steppes of central Asia to south-eastern Europe represents over a quarter of Ancient Ink across all three sections, and it is the most comprehensively covered cultural zone. While this is not to say that the material does not merit such a treatment—indeed, the chapters from Svetlana Pankova, Petar Zidarov, and Leonid Yablonsky provide [End Page 250] important insights into the archaeology of Iron Age tattooing among the Scythians. Northern Europe, given its lack of archaeological (though not literary) evidence for tattooing, is understandably only referred to in passing by Gemma Angel (p. 107) and Luc Renaut (pp. 260–61). Modern European tattooing is covered by Krutak and Deter-Wolf, with an examination of collections of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century skin fragments in museums, as well as the short but thought-provoking chapter on organizations founded in the last decade for the purpose of allowing individuals to legally have their own tattoos preserved for them after death. North-eastern America and Alaska are represented with three ‘Tools’ and two ‘Art’ chapters, which is a fair reflection of the available archaeological evidence in these areas, being largely restricted to historical descriptions, depictions, and toolkits. Two of these chapters, both co-authored by Deter-Wolf, on the archaeological identification of tattooing tools, are must-read contributions to the field. But looking further south, there is no mention in Ancient Ink of the tattooing cultures of South America, especially...