Profs & Pints Nashville: Ancient Tattooing

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Ancient Tattooing,” on tattooing traditions around the world and throughout human history, with Aaron Deter-Wolf, archaeologist with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, visiting fellow with the University of Southampton, and leading scholar of ancient tattooing.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-ancient-tattooing ]

Dr. Aaron Deter-Wolf has spent two decades working alongside other archaeologists, tattoo artists, and indigenous researchers to record ancient, preserved tattoos and to understand the artifacts and methods of tattooing in the distant past. Profs and Pints is bringing him to Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom to give a talk on the rapidly developing field of “tattoo archaeology.”

He’ll describe how archaeological evidence for tattooing dates back at least 5,000 years, and includes figurines, statues, possible tattooing materials such as bone needles, and rock art that shows human-like figures with carved or painted body decoration. Actual marks have been found preserved on mummified remains from over 70 archaeological sites on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.

Such evidence of ancient tattooing has been present in archaeological collections for more than a century, but it was largely overlooked by archaeologists until recently. Older generations of Western scholars, who themselves were rarely tattooed, viewed the practice negatively and thus were prone to ignore or misinterpret evidence.

Drawing from communications with indigenous practitioners and from a decade-long survey of hundreds of museum collections and historical records, Dr. Deter-Wolf will describe global patterns in traditional tattooing technologies and techniques. They include hand poking, hand tapping, and incision tattooing, all of which predate electrical tattooing by thousands of years.

You’ll learn about experimental studies in which Dr. Deter-Wolf worked with professional tattooers to recreate stone, bone, and metal tools which they then tested on their own skin and elsewhere to identify the microscopic wear patterns created on tool tips during tattooing. Comparing the marks left on living skin during these studies with preserved ancient tattoos enabled them to correct earlier assumptions about tattooing methods in Copper Age Europe, on the Iron Age Eurasian Steppe, and among pre-Inca cultures of the Andes.

Finally, we’ll look at how Dr. Deter-Wolf and is fellow researchers have used digital-imaging technology to record thousands of never-before seen tattoos on naturally mummified remains from the deserts of the Peruvian central coast. This talk is sure to leave an imprint on you. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A ceramic pot from Arkansas from about 1500 depicts a tattooed face. Photo by Aaron Deter-Wolf.