The culture of tattooing practices

In human cultures and human history, tattooing practices varied from rubbing ash, plant dyes and ink into open wounds to create distinctive markings.

The thought that tattoo is capable of expressing so many different concepts, and is therefore a means of communication, is not a new one. Writers, observers, tattooists, and the tattooed have all remarked upon this aspect.

Because the choice of tattoo is personal and reflects the desires and tastes of the wearer in a very permanent way, much of tattoo art tends to provide little insight into the lives of the artist who create it.

Artifacts recovered from archeological sites dating from the Upper Paleolithic era (38,000 to 10,000 BC) in Europe have been interpreted as puncturing tools and pigment reservoirs.

Clay and stone figurines with engraved designs that may represent tattooing have been found.

Ancient Germanic, Scandinavian, Celtic and other tribes often used tattooing for religious significance as well as markers of class. It has long held religious, spiritual and social connotations both in the United States and abroad.

The three most widely recognized religious affiliations with tattooing are Catholicism, Japanese mythology and ‘modern primitivism’.
The culture of tattooing practices

Archeology: Limitation and Contributions to Understanding of Human Culture

One of the limitations on archeology is that what remains are only the durable materials of a past culture. These are not necessarily what the people might have left if they had wanted to show us what was important to them.

Prehistoric peoples did not have the future in mind when they dump their garbage or buried their dead; they did not provide us with a time capsule containing records of their way of life.

Thus not only must we interpret the material they left behind within the limited context in which we find them, such as a burial site or a refuse pit; we must also try to paint a picture of an entire way of life without the hope of ever finding physical evidence for much of that picture.

We can make an inventory of the kinds of tools or weapons of early humans used at a given sites, and we can note which ones are found most often, how they are made and so forth.

What, then, can archeology contribute to our understanding of human culture and social behavior? First, we can learn much about the technology of earlier peoples through their materials remains, as well as through analysis of such aspects of their life style as what they ate.

For example we can tell whether a particular group lived mainly by hunting or fishing or farming. A second aspect of the life of early peoples that is revealed to us through archeology is their economic practices.

For example, sometimes we find pottery or jewelry made from materials that are to have known available only in distant place. This usually means that these items were not made at the site but obtained through some other means – either by traveling to the place where they were available or by trading with other group.

Finally, archeology evidence can reveal a great deal about certain aspects of the religious and spiritual life of ancient societies. We can recognize sacred objects by their location in centers of religious activity or in burial sites.

When we are fortunate enough to find their temples or other religious structures, we can determine their importance and their influence on the society. But in other areas it is very hard to interpret the evidence.

Thus we know little about ancient people their feelings about spirit and so forth. Even when we find materials object that might suggest such beliefs; we cannot ask anyone to explain their meaning but must go on what we know about other aspects of that society and later societies that seem to be similar to it.

Definitions of Archeology

Archeology, the branch of anthropology that is devoted to the study of the human past, often focuses on the period before people began to keep written record.

Archeologists study the origin, spread, and evolution of culture by examining the remains of past societies. They share the task of other kinds of anthropologists in that they are trying to understand human behavior.

The difference is that their materials are generally the unwritten records of past societies. They can’t sit down with living members of those societies and talk about each they have found. They can’t even observe living people, but must interpret the material evidence left by people long dead.

Many archeologists distinguish between prehistoric archeology, which is the study of extinct cultures that left no written record, and history archeology, which is the investigation of those groups for whom there are written materials to accompany the archeological evidence.

Archeology is limited by the nature of the evidence it deals with. For one thing we cannot examine the activities of prehistoric people. We have almost no way of knowing what they believed, what they valued or even how they organized their society.

We can guess a few things such as, that early human beings believed in form of magic created by imitating the image of a natural object. One interpretation of the famous prehistoric cave paintings in southern France and Spain is that they were meant to ensure success in a hunting expedition by showing a successful hunting scene.
Definitions of Archeology

Anthropology and Archeology

Early investigations suffered from the problems that were common to all scientific fields in 19th century.

Their measurements were crude at best, and their knowledge of human anatomy and physiology was limited. But with each new discovery, another piece was added to the puzzle.

Anthropologist became more aware of the relationships between human beings and other animals.

They began to understand some of the obvious differences among human populations: they learn how physical features like skin color or how hair type or even height and general body structure were tied in with the environments in which people had lived for very long period.

Without evidence of past, there could be no anthropology. The evidence was provided by archeology.

Although in the nineteenth century archeology was not considered a branch of anthropology, its subject matter was of crucial important to physical anthropologists. Archaeologists are concerned primarily with prehistory – the period of human existence prior to the keeping of written records or historical accounts.

Their aim is to reconstruct the origins and spread of culture by examining any remains of past societies that we are fortunate enough to find.

Although archeology is best known for its dramatic discoveries of ancient cities, and the “great” civilizations of the past, it also provides us with vast amount of information about ancient people and their customs.
Anthropology and Archeology