The cultural heritage of tattooing: a brief history
1Repatriation Office, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA.
Abstract:
For millennia, peoples around the world have tattooed human skin to communicate various ontological, psychosocial, and sociocultural concepts encompassing beauty, cultural identity, status and position, medicine, and supernatural protection. As a system of knowledge transmission, tattooing has been and continues to be a visual language of the skin whereby culture is inscribed, experienced, and preserved in a myriad of specific ways. If we are to fully comprehend the meanings that tattoos have carried across human history and into the present, then it would be useful to explore some of the ways tattoos, as instruments that transmit culture, have been deployed cross-culturally through time.
Related Concept Videos
Ethnic Identity within a Larger Culture
The Role of Culture
Impression Management Techniques I: Managing Appearances
Self Within Cultural Contexts
Cultural Influences on Personality
Self-Esteem and Culture


