Tattooing is one of the oldest and most widespread art forms in the world, and often the designs we decide to commit permanently to our skin are thick with meaning and cultural biases. Studying a tattoo from a certain time and place, therefore, can give us an idea of the cultural norms surrounding its design and application – and that’s precisely what a team from the University of Maine has recently done.
As documented in a research report that has not been peer-reviewed, by looking at a selection of 90 samples of tattooed human remains from pre-Columbian Peru, they pinpointed exactly how tattoos were being created hundreds of years ago, and why – and what we can learn from that. So what did they discover?
Puncture Tattooing
Like modern tattooing, “puncture” tattooing involves, well, puncturing the skin. It was done using a sharp tool with pigment applied to the tip, and was, the authors write, “the most frequent method of pre-electric tattooing at a global scale.”
Indeed, from the bone combs of ancient Polynesia to the hand-poked body art of Ötzi the Iceman himself, there’s historical evidence of puncture tattooing across the globe. Pre-Columbian Peru – and the Americas in general – were no exception, with more than half of the examples studied by the University of Maine team having exclusively puncture tattoos.
Those tattoos ranged from fine lines to filled blocks of black pigment, to geometric decorative bands, but all of them were created the same way – with a poke.
Now, you might be wondering how exactly the team knew they were looking at a puncture tattoo – but it’s actually pretty straightforward. “Puncture tattooing results in marks that under magnification exhibit uneven edges resulting from the placement of adjacent wounds,” the paper explains.
Meanwhile, “filled areas may appear solid to the naked eye,” it says, “but under close examination exhibit distinctive internal stippling and variations in pigment density.”
Of course, that’s to be expected without access to today’s modern precision machinery – so what were the artists of the day using instead? One clue can be found in a stray dot, found tattooed a minuscule 2.6 millimeters (0.1 inches) outside of the recipient’s presumably intended design: the mark “measures approximately 1.2 millimeters [0.05 inches] in diameter,” the team notes, “and, from the distribution of pigment, appears to have been created by a tool composed of six or seven fine points bundled into a round cluster.”
“This arrangement is evocative of bundled cactus spines used historically for puncture tattooing by Indigenous cultures elsewhere in South America,” they conclude, “including the upper Amazon and Rio de la Plata watersheds and the Argentinian Chaco.”
Incision Tattooing
One step up on the wince-inducement scale is the technique of incision tattooing: the practice of making slices in the top layer of the skin and then rubbing pigment into the resulting wounds. While it may sound slightly rough-and-ready to modern ears, tattoos created through this method are actually set apart by just how neat they look: “lines created using this method are extremely thin, have clean margins, and exhibit tapering at one or both ends,” the paper explains.
It hasn’t caught on in a big way in modern times, but remains from pre-Columbian Argentina have shown that, in some places at least, it was the preferred method of tattooing. The same doesn’t seem to have been true further north, however: out of the 90 samples examined in the study, only five had been tattooed exclusively in this way.
The fact that it was used at all, however, does tell us something about the way these ancient artists created their tattoos. Incision tattooing’s two-step process, in which pigment must be rubbed in after the skin is cut, makes pre-drawing your design all but pointless – it’ll just get rubbed off when you apply the color. That “suggests that Andean tattooers working by incision did not pre-draw their designs,” the paper points out, “or perhaps developed a compartmentalized workflow of drawing, cutting, and rubbing pigment into progressive sections.”
Similarly, none of the filled-in motifs decorating samples showed any evidence of having been outlined first. Evidently, these were artists very confident in their ability to get it right the first time.
Skin Stitching
Not actually evidenced in any of the samples, but still worth a mention because it is objectively Very Cool, is the third method of pre-electric tattooing mentioned in the paper: skin stitching. Now, this isn’t being included randomly – it was actually slightly surprising that the team found no evidence of the technique, since it’s known to have occurred in both Patagonia and eastern Brazil, as well as further north in certain First Nations tribes in Canada.
It made sense, then, that the same may have been true in Peru, and indeed previous researchers had hypothesized just that. But in the end, no examples were identified.
And it’s not like they would have been easily missed, by the way. Created by pretty literally stitching the tattoo into the skin using a needle and pigment-infused thread or sinew, skin stitching results in highly distinctive physical traits.
Nevertheless, it seems the Andean artists preferred tattooing by puncture, incision, or a mixture of the two. And it turns out, they were pretty darn good at it.
Expert tattooists
While some of us will forever rue the “ur name” or “MOM” forever emblazoned on our butts after that one drunken night out, tattoos for many are a meaningful and personal piece of body art. The same was true for the pre-Columbian Peruvians – if not more so – and represented a person’s unique and ongoing journey through their life.
“Tattooing in indigenous and historical societies was rarely a single event,” the paper explains. “Instead, an individual’s tattoos evolved and expanded over their lifetime, mediated through changes to their social role, identity, beliefs, relationships, and accomplishments.”
Tattoos would grow and change with time; new ones would be added and old ones covered up. “Tattoos were neither static nor sacrosanct, at least for some pre-Columbian Andean individuals,” the paper notes – but they certainly were important, both socially and personally.
As such, the tattooists themselves were highly trained – a fact which is borne out by the range of tattooing techniques shown in the samples, the team points out. “The presence of multiple tattooing techniques, and therefore multiple yet-to-be-identified tool types, further reiterates craft specialization associated tattooing in Andean communities,” they write.
“Practitioners would have been trained in the use, and possibly the creation, of both puncture and incision tools, as well as associated material culture such as pigments and ritual paraphernalia,” the paper continues, while “the consistency and quality of tattoos […] suggests these artists were not self-taught, but, instead, operated within an established craftwork tradition.”
Reviving Indigenous history
Despite millennia of this flourishing artistic and cultural tradition, traditional tattooing methods were all but extinguished by the arrival of European colonists – leaving “virtually no trace” of the practice in colonial histories, the authors write.
“The present research builds on an emerging picture of the Peruvian Central Coast as the center of a vibrant, yet relatively unrecognized Indigenous tattooing tradition,” the paper laments, “exist[ing] at a scale potentially without parallel in the pre-modern world.”
With that in mind, the study of ancient tattoos represents far more than just a contextless appreciation of historical art, the team believes. Rather, it can open windows into understanding Indigenous beliefs and teachings, their cultural practices, and community knowledge, all of which has been lost to time and colonization.
Hopefully one day, the paper concludes, “through careful and respectful documentation, tattooed pre-Columbian communities of the Andean Central Coast may once again share their cultural knowledge.”
The paper appears in Andean Past.
