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Lascaux Cave: the original tattoo studio - Ep 20
598 Plays10 months ago
There are so many things that don’t survive the thousands of years between the past and present, and so many crafts and skills that are very difficult to identify from a material point of view. Luckily, we have expert artists who can help us out! This month, Matilda is joined by professional tattoo artist Daniel Riday, who will be chatting all about the tools and techniques used in ancient tattooing. What’s the difference between using a blade versus a needle to create a tattoo? What’s the oldest tattooing tool ever found? Are we really sure we know how Ötzi the Iceman got his tattoos? And why does Daniel want to mummify himself? Tune in to find out in the first of this exciting two-part special on the fascinating subject of ancient tattoos.
Links
- EXARC tattooing project
- EXARC tattooing project published paper
- Chauvet cave paintings
- Lascaux cave paintings
- Maya Sialuk Jacobsen (Inuit tattoo traditions)
- Terra Metis Ceramics
Guest Contact:
- Name: Daniel Riday
- Insta: @totemic_tattoo
Contact the Host
- Email: [email protected]
- https://www.thearchaeologiststeacup.com
- insta: @the_archaeologists_teacup
- fb: /TheArchaeologistsTeacup
- twitter: @ArchaeoTeacup
ArchPodNet
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- Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 20 of Tea Break Time Travel. I am your host, Matilda Ziebrecht. Very excited that we're hitting 20 episodes. I know that some shows on this channel have like hundreds, but for me it's very exciting to hit 20. And today I am savoring a Roibos Chai Tea, which is quite nice for this time of morning actually, and joining me on my tea break today from the
00:00:37
Speaker
The other side of the world, all the way over in New Zealand, is professional tattoo artist Daniel Ridday, known on his social platform, so you might know him better as Totemic Tattoo. Welcome, Daniel.
Guest's Personal Background
00:00:48
Speaker
And what are you drinking today? Are you also on tea? I guess it's evening for you, so you might not necessarily be on a hot beverage.
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm not on a hot beverage at the moment. It's 8.25 in the evening. You're tonight, I suppose it is. And no, but I am a avid coffee drinker. I grew up in Seattle, where that's just what we drink instead of water. But I like to get creative with my coffees. I put chai spices in there, chocolate, honey, all sorts.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's always an adventure. It's not the same as, because I had an Italian guest on at some point, and he was saying, no, it's espresso. That's the only coffee that you can have is espresso, but that's, I guess, not the case. Well, it's espresso coffee. I'm just throwing a lot of other stuff in there. Fair enough. A little bit of flavoring. And, you know, like shameless promotion here. Whenever I'm drinking a hot beverage, I drink it out of a mug made by my talented wife, who is a ceramicist.
00:01:44
Speaker
who is extremely talented. I also have one of her mugs, which I'm very, although I need to, I was so happy. I admit to see that you guys are moving back to Europe soon. Yes. Because I was pouring tea into my wonderful mug from, from July and the lid of the teapot fell off and it chipped the end, the edge of the mug. I was so disappointed. Such is life.
00:02:05
Speaker
I mean, it's still usable and I stuck it back on, but just I'm now nervous about using it, like washing it up and stuff. I'm really careful with it. Well, we can resupply you. I may have to get another one. I mean, such is life. Hard times. We're set up to move in April. We'll be setting up in France. And in the tattoo studio, I will be building over there in Dordogne. We will also be supplying ceramics, pottery, figurines, jewelry and other such cool stuff.
00:02:35
Speaker
Very cool. And they are very cool. Anyone listening, I would, I'll put in the show notes, both Julie's Instas and stuff so that you can see because they are beautiful creations.
Artistic Journey to Tattooing
00:02:46
Speaker
But yes, all good. This is what, this is the place for shameless self-promotion.
00:02:51
Speaker
So welcome, Daniel. But as well as being very artistic and very, very good in things, your main focus, I suppose, in terms of work, in terms of creativity is tattooing, which is a very specific craft. You're our first tattoo artist, I believe that we've had on the on the podcast. What?
00:03:07
Speaker
made you decide to go down that route? Was it something that you always wanted to do when you were younger? Was it something you kind of fell into? In my family, art has been always taken really seriously. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was young. She was a painter. Her parents were both painters at a professional level.
00:03:23
Speaker
My grandmother and her two sisters opened an art gallery that I spent a lot of time at when I was a kid. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, every child is an artist and so they're told not to be. So the lucky ones are just always encouraged rather than told off or made to do something that is quote unquote more important.
00:03:46
Speaker
And art is now supporting my family as it did, you know, my great grandparents. And it's something I moved into in different ways throughout my adult life. I used to do childcare work, actually, and I spent a lot of time drawing pictures for children to color in.
00:04:02
Speaker
Oh gosh, I thought you were about to say I spent a lot of time tattooing the children. I moved into tattooing when I transitioned out of childcare work. I had been traveling a lot in my 20s and when I was able to settle down and find a good teacher, I settled into a
00:04:22
Speaker
kind of classical mentor and apprentice relationship. And I was living in Brussels, my teacher was in Holland, I was going up there two days a week to learn from him. And he instilled a lot of good values and artistic integrity, things like that.
00:04:37
Speaker
Because I noticed as well that you have an apprentice now as well. Yes, I do. So when that situation takes place in terms of art, I'm just curious because I've never experienced it myself. I mean, I imagine there might be some stylistic, not copying, but kind of you just automatically get a little bit of the style of the mentor. Do you find that it's
00:04:54
Speaker
very distant, it's very kind of individual. I suppose that would be a kind of person-to-person scenario. I definitely inspired some things from my mentor, but didn't take on everything that he was doing. He had a very specific repertoire and mine turned out to be quite different. We overlapped in the beginning with some sort of stylistically Japanese imagery.
00:05:16
Speaker
But I moved away from that when I started hand poking because he trained me as a machine artist and I did that for a few years before I made the switch to traditional methods. So now I don't use machines and I haven't for years and I feel ashamed to admit that I'm not sure I would remember how to use them now.
00:05:34
Speaker
after all the training. That's inevitable. And what made you go that route in terms of going the more traditional methods and I guess more it's sort of almost prehistory inspired I suppose you'd say. In a lot of ways it is
Ancient Tattoo Techniques
00:05:50
Speaker
the
00:05:50
Speaker
the result of my fascination with ancient art, paleolithic style art and things like that. I had done one or two tattoos in ancient looking styles but with machines and they had come out really tidy and clean and that just didn't sit right with me. I wanted a bit of like archaic ruggedness and
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, it needed to look like it had been painted on a cave wall and the machines were just not giving that result. I couldn't pull myself away from the fascination of hand poking, but then that didn't even stop me because I've moved in now to doing incision tattooing, which is also scratching an itch of curiosity.
00:06:34
Speaker
And experimentation with different tools, cactus needles, bird bones, mammoth ivory, sharp rocks, all sorts. It's been a journey. And your customers are happy for you to... I can imagine, I guess they go to you, they know that they're going to get something a little different and they know that they're going to get something more unique so they don't really question, wait, is that a cactus needle that you're using or do you get a little bit of pushback?
00:07:01
Speaker
The cactus needles are those other things I usually would reserve just for experimental archaeology. I can get into the project that Arendita Wolf and I took on in a little bit. But to answer your question, for the most part I'm using normal standard sterilized tattoo machine needles.
00:07:19
Speaker
The most convenient, they give the best results. I use those every day. But in my day-to-day, if somebody requests some kind of specifically cave art style imagery, I like to also do a little touch of it with little handmade needles I make with mammoth ivory fragments that I buy as broken pieces, offcuts from when excavators find entire tusks, but they can't restore each little piece. So I buy that in bulk. I shape it into needles.
00:07:46
Speaker
I clean them, I put them through a medical autoclave, and I tattoo with them, but they dull rather quickly, and I can't reuse them again safely, so I donate them to the client after each session. And I do the same with microblades, like microlithic, obsidian, flint, and chert. Lithic tools for very specific types of tattoos. Those tools can't make a myriad of different marks. It's very specific what they can and can't do. But I do the same thing with those as well.
00:08:15
Speaker
Okay, I remember hearing a story about a doctor, it was a kind of experimental archaeology project, and they'd asked a surgeon if he could use some obsidian tools instead of the kind of normal scalpel. It wasn't for like a major surgery or anything, it was sort of like a smaller scale one. Yes, let's take this cancer out and let me try using this obsidian tool. No, I can't remember what the surgery was now, but it was something that, you know, it
00:08:37
Speaker
would be okay to use maybe a different tool, and obviously it was all sterilized and everything. And the doctor was so impressed with how sharp the blade kept, how well it cut, and all this kind of thing that he kept using them afterwards. Like he kept, that was sort of- Yeah, I've heard about that same experiment. If I'm correct, there might be people listening who will tell me I'm wrong, but I'd like to learn, so speak to me if you find that what I'm going to say is incorrect. But obsidian, if properly napped, can break on an edge only one molecule thick.
00:09:03
Speaker
making it 100 times sharper than a surgical scalpel. I mean, after having worked a lot of obsidian and my fingers being in tatters afterwards, I can definitely say it's sharp. So actually what I find is interesting, I've given a lot of thought to that because every time you're doing some obsidian working, you end up with little cuts, right? Everybody who's tried it has end up with little cuts and you don't notice it first because it's so sharp.
00:09:31
Speaker
I noticed most of the time because, oh, my wrist is cold. Why is my wrist cold? Oh, it's wet. Oh, it's blood. And so what I think is like tattoos can be as old as let's say like use and or domestication of fire where you get common interaction with sweat powder, charcoal powder, those kinds of things. Let's say you're like,
00:09:54
Speaker
napping a piece of obsidian to make an arrowhead and you go shoot a duck and then you go to cook it. You might have gotten a little cut while you're napping and you might have gotten like grease or fat or oil from the animal and then touched some charcoal or soot powder on a piece of wood that you're burning. You could probably get an accidental tattoo that way. I haven't tried to. You don't hurt myself and go cook meat.
00:10:17
Speaker
But it stands to reason that the magical combination, open-skin binding agent and pigment, is not that difficult of a situation to come across in hunter-gatherer societies.
Cultural Significance of Tattoos
00:10:34
Speaker
I like that theory. I don't think it would have taken... It was my mentor, actually, who was telling me this idea. This was his theory. But that's the kind of person I learned from. So these were the questions I had in my head from the very beginning of my training in this world. Yeah. Oh, amazing. Yeah. I like that idea that it just sort of happened by accident.
00:10:51
Speaker
But then as well, imagine it happened by accident and then people started to catch on, you know, like so many other things. Yeah, that looks cool. How did you do that? Oh, I don't know. Let's try some things and see if we can replicate it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, being the first family group or tribe to show back up at that salmon run or caribou hunt with decorated skin, you know, how cool would you look?
00:11:15
Speaker
And then two generations down the line, you would be the people with the zigzags, you know? You would identify as that cultural group and people would know you by your zigzags. So the progression is just so logical to me. I find it really fascinating to think about.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't even included that as a discussion question. This is perfect, because indeed, I hadn't even thought of that. But like, of course, what's the origin of tattooing? You always think of it for any other material or any other kind of technology. And I guess people always just assume, oh, yeah, it just happened. But indeed, how would it have happened? I like that theory. That's a nice theory. And because today, of course, we are on a tea break, but we are doing some time traveling. I, of course, have to ask, if you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
00:11:58
Speaker
For those of you who are familiar with the Chauvet Cave in France, it's a marvel of the ancient world. The genuine cave, the real cave, is closed through the vacation, but the museum is remarkable. I would choose to go watch the painter prepare their
00:12:16
Speaker
paint brushes and prepare the wall by scraping it smooth and just get ready and let the anticipation build for those iconic streaks across the cave wall to make what turns out to be a mammoth, a bison, the horn of a rhinoceros. That's the one with the famous horse, right? That would be Peshmail. Peshmail as the dotted horse.
00:12:41
Speaker
Maybe I'm thinking of that one. I went in that cave this summer. It was remarkable. Oh, really? The fat horses, the fat horses in most of them. Lasko has more fat horses than Chauvet, I think. Chauvet is famous for a fresco of lions all looking at something. It has bison. It has a really nice megalosaurus. It has a rhinoceros. It has a lot. It's exceptionally exceptional. And it's about double the age of Lasko as well, which makes it... It's a wonder.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, it is incredible to think that how talented and how artistic and indeed the planning that must have gone into it. I mean, I imagine it's something similar when you're tattooing, you have to think of the shape of the arm or the shape of the thing, like they were looking at the shape of different things. Yes.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's why this style plays so well into tattooing because as it flows around different parts of the body, the image comes to life in a way that it can't do on paper or in 2D anyway. Yeah. That's really fun to play around with. It's like an unending kind of puzzle to put together for different people, different projects.
00:13:45
Speaker
I love what I do, so. Yeah, it helps. And do you often have, like, you'll have a design and then you'll suggest to people, oh, this would go really well on this part of the body, or do you kind of adapt to the design, depending on where they want it to be? It really depends. If people have a specific request, we usually speak beforehand and design it to fit their body. But also I have just a lot of art that's available art. So I'm going to a tattoo convention next weekend or something. And there'll be a lot of art that's pre-prepared.
00:14:13
Speaker
if people want just like a little, you know, mammoth silhouette or something like that. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Yeah, it'll be good. Well, thank you very much for joining my tea break today. And I guess most of you listening have probably guessed what we're going to look at today. But before we go into more detail, we're going to journey back to around 3,100 BC to the northern part of Africa, what we now call Egypt. It is, of course, a very hot day, but we managed to find shelter in the shade of a nearby building along with several other people.
00:14:41
Speaker
One of these people is a young woman sitting on the ground beside another figure who is bent over her arm, eyes closed in concentration. The woman we see is seems calm although she is gritting her teeth slightly. We move a bit closer and see that the area below her shoulder has already been decorated with three black wavy almost s-shaped symbols all in varying stages of healing.
00:15:02
Speaker
And beneath them, the figure beside her is now creating another symbol, one hand cutting the fresh skin into small pricks, while the other is rubbing soot from a nearby pot into the freshly carved wounds. So today, we are looking at, indeed, tattooing tools, which we've already gone into a little bit. And actually, before we get to the Google search questions, I need to ask, because I couldn't find what method they would have been using in this time in Egypt. But maybe you have a better... Was that at all correct, that time travel, or was that just a figment of my imagination?
00:15:32
Speaker
It was very correct in most ways. That's a very positive outlook.
00:15:38
Speaker
And it is very hard to find the kind of information on what tattooing technique and or tool would have been used in which particular ancient culture, because that information is... those kinds of questions are not asked often, and the people who have answers to them are very few. So I do a lot of my proper science and archaeology work with a proper scientist who is an archaeologist, Dr. Aaron Dederwolf, who will be coming on next month, which is very exciting. Very exciting.
00:16:06
Speaker
When he and I have a close look at the images we've been able to find on Egyptian mummy tattoos from dynastic Egypt, we find that the tattoos we're seeing are hand poked tattoos. So not incised, like, which would be to cut and rub.
00:16:23
Speaker
the skin with pigment into it but definitely poked so i'm thinking prickly pair of thorns it could be ostrich bone tattooing needles it could be copper if i was affluent i would be using gold and or copper maybe bronze tattooing needles but gold is a bit too soft it would just be really flashy
00:16:44
Speaker
Yes, for dynastic Egyptian mummy tattoos, it seems that what I've seen and what I can confirm with Aaron is hand poked, not incised, although Northern Africa does have
Archaeological Insights into Tattooing
00:17:01
Speaker
tattoo incision, incision tattoos as part of some traditional practices today. But we haven't seen that in the Egyptian mummies that are preserved that I've seen. Maybe if somebody has access to other images of other mummies, I would really be interested in seeing those.
00:17:17
Speaker
Oh, there you go. If anyone there happens to have some pictures of Boris or a mummy lying around, you know who to contact. You never know. There might be someone going, oh, yeah, my grandma had that mummy. Let me check the attic. Well, and so usually at this point, I go to Google and I search the object and it comes up with a lot of lovely autofill, most asked questions on the internet.
00:17:40
Speaker
Weirdly with tattooing tools and tattooing methods, not much came up. Even when I added in ancient and things, there was sort of very little out there on the internet. But of course, the standard question that came up was oldest. So what is the oldest tattoo tool? What is the oldest tattoo method? And we've already talked a little bit about that already, but would you be able to say definitively what kind of the oldest tool and the oldest method might be? Yes, actually. Oh, there you go. I think there was a reason I asked you on here.
00:18:08
Speaker
It was a microware analysis that confirmed turkey bone tools discovered in Tennessee at 3,600 to 5,500 years old. Confirmed as the world's oldest tattooing tools. Known currently to science and analyzed are not disputed.
00:18:28
Speaker
In so many archaeological digs, there are implements, leather punching holes, needles that could have been sewing needles. There are spikes and punches and drill tips and things like that that so many of them very well might be tattooing tools, but mislabeled like a hairpin or something like that.
00:18:49
Speaker
It would take decades to, you know, carefully go through museum archives and analyze these kinds of things. And I'm not an archaeologist, and I don't have decades to do that kind of stuff. There are people out there who are trying to answer those questions, like Aaron Dieter-Wolf, and maybe you can ask him a bit about his microwave analysis information, his techniques. But I mean, implements that could have been used in tattooing are a common thing, I think, in archaeological discoveries.
00:19:16
Speaker
But indeed, that's the sort of, which you think if that's the oldest one that's been confirmed, potentially it was thousands of years before that, even that they started doing the tattooing process with other tools or with other things. Yeah, absolutely. There was a few other ones that in Aaron and Lars' book, Archaeology Inc.,
00:19:34
Speaker
which is a fantastic read, by the way. You can also read a little bit about a pre-dynastic woman in Egypt. In her tomb, they've included owls like bone owls and small micro blades, which could have been used in tattooing. 3600 BCE. Copper age Romania, there were needles bound into like a comb, which we would use in tattooing as a tool called a magnum.
00:19:55
Speaker
It's for pushing ink into the skin more rapidly than a single point would do. And that's 4,500 to 4,200 BCE. The potential for tattooing tools in the archaeological record is quite huge. And if the people that really start a genuine hunt... There's so much out there. We'll get more into that in a second, but first let's just have a very quick break and we will be back soon.
00:20:24
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. So we've already spoken quite a bit about the different kind of tattooing tools, but seeing as we have you here, Daniel, we're gonna poke you for as many answers as we can while we have such an expert in our midst. So we've already talked a bit about kind of the kinds of tools from different sites that could generally be associated with tattooing. So you mentioned that any sort of needle or any kind of comb, I think you said, any kind of blade, is there anything
00:20:49
Speaker
I use the word comb more as like needles found in a row. When we look at like say Polynesian traditional tattooing implements, they're what's called combed, which would mean that just it's a flat bone and or like turtle shell plate with the very, you know, last tip of it carved into needles all in a row.
00:21:13
Speaker
made for just putting more ink in more quickly. So that's what I meant by combed object. Yes, rather than just like taking your hair comb and... Yeah, that would be really brittle and really foolish because you'd really comb really quickly. And you'd be quite sick as well, right? Yeah. That would be painful. Because how small... I mean, I imagine the needle tip only really goes in a couple of millimeters if done.
00:21:36
Speaker
like two two mil depends it depends what part of the body there's tougher skin like back of the hand and softer skin armpit or like you know ribs some areas you have to be really gentle some areas you have to be really kind of tough so it just depends a bit depends if that person has spent a lot of time with heavy sun exposure or doing hard work or has worked with chemicals some things toughen up the skin but yes in general around two millimeters it just kind of
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine got the microwave. So I do microwave as well. And so I can imagine the trying to look at just that last two millimeter and trying to think if that is that is that a trace or is that just, you know, I'm a patient person, but not for that kind of
00:22:17
Speaker
analysis. I just work with better people than myself and I'm lucky to do that. You're delegating. This is good. I'm being invited to participate in other people's projects as a specialist consultant for the weird stuff that I know about. That's perfect. Well, that's why you're here as well. It works apparently. But are there any, so you've got the kind of the needles or the blades or the things that actually, should we say like push into the skin or kind of permeate into the skin, but are there any other
00:22:47
Speaker
tools or any other associated, I don't know, pots for the soot or anything like that that could also be associated with tattooing on the site. Absolutely. The one that's really quite remarkable is Philippovka 1, year 400 BCE, a Sarmatian burial site necropolis that has
00:23:06
Speaker
complete tattooing sets with mixing palettes with pestles, single point tools with ink pouches that the needle is actually left in a leather pouch with pigment. It also has scraping spoons, bronze mirror, and long gold needles, some of which are eyed needles, which I'm dubious that they would have been used for what we call skin stitch tattooing, because that practice is really centered around the Arctic Circle, practice in indigenous populations around the Arctic Circle.
00:23:34
Speaker
a little bit. It did extend into Siberia and parts of that. It's possible that maybe, but I would say unlikely. And the issue is that that site is Sarmatian and we don't have any mummies from the Sarmatian empire that we can compare their tattoos and look at the different marks made and say this was stitched in with a needle and thread or this was poked in or whatever. We have the Scythian Pazarek tattoos.
00:24:03
Speaker
Oh, right. Yes. But those are definitely made with different tools. So to answer your question, as well, different tools, you know, different materials, different needle arrangements, leave different marks and different hafting methods. So how you attach that needle to something makes changes as well. So across Polynesia, you're seeing hand tapping where it's fixed at a 90 degree angle to a stick and then tapped with percussive force by another stick. In Japan, you have tibori where you're you're hafting it to a
00:24:32
Speaker
another stick and then pushing it into the skin at one angle, but different than Sakyant, which is Southeast Asia and Cambodia held at a different angle on the end of a long stick. There's different tattooing, incominations, needle arrangements and tool types for pretty much each different culture. Each island in Polynesia has different ones. It's a rabbit hole.
00:24:53
Speaker
I seem to know somehow that you did a project as part of I think it was from EXARC you
Cultural Identity and Modern Practices
00:25:00
Speaker
got funding and I think from somewhere else you got funding to look at all these different tattooing methods and everything so I think you've already written up some of the results of that in the EXARC journal but maybe you could elaborate a little bit here so you can even tell the difference between a needle that is halved it on one stick but done at a different angle
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, actually. So the project was funded by EXARC. That was really cool. Erin and I jumped into it with the help of our friend Maya, who's in you a tattoo traditions on Instagram. She's advising on part of the project to tell us how to go about doing skin stitching to
00:25:32
Speaker
analyze that as part of our research, and my friend Mokunui Orangi-Smith, who's a traditional Tamoko, that's like Maori tattoo artist from here in New Zealand, he came down and helped with the hand tapping in that project.
00:25:48
Speaker
The basis of it was to make the same tattoo of the same identical mark eight different times with eight different tools and analyze the results to see how they heal, how they look different. And under microscopic analysis, analyze the tattoos over months of healing time and the tools as well before and after use. And it was important to do this project on living human skin so that it does heal.
00:26:12
Speaker
rather than a lot of science does their experiments on pig skin or you know like these pig carcasses but that doesn't go through a healing process and we lose a lot of important data. And am I correct in saying it's you who have the tattoos on you? Yep, so it was like 13 hours of tattooing my leg and my friend Mokosmith came down from Auckland to do the two hand tapping tattoos but the rest was yeah we did oh let's see if I can name them off in order there was
00:26:41
Speaker
And poking with a spike made of obsidian, so a really sharp kind of puncturing spike. Skin stitching, so under the guidance of Maya. Quick question. The skin stitching, does the needle actually go all the way, like the complete needle has to go, it's like sewing a piece of leather or something. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. Oh, I imagine they must be very, very thin than these needles.
00:27:10
Speaker
The interesting thing was she had to instruct me on how to make eyed needles from bird bone, you know, over Instagram chats. And she had to do it to convince me to make them small enough that I could use them functionally, but not break them in the crafting process. I spent months making these needles and I break about two out of every three I would attempt. They're exceptionally difficult to make even with, you know, like,
00:27:34
Speaker
you know, metal tools, hand tools, you know. And so by the time I was ready to use this, you know, sterilized bird bone needle, it was pretty thin, pretty fine. But the women who do these traditional tattoos within the Arctic Circle, I take my hat off to them. This is a extremely technical, very difficult tattooing technique. And with the expertise that they must have to create the marks that they
00:28:03
Speaker
that they do is remarkable. And so this was just something I was being instructed on how to perform for this experiment, but I don't have it as part of my practice. I didn't culturally appropriate this technique. It was just to answer a few questions under the guidance of a indigenous tattoo practitioner, and I have not done it since so. I mean, because also there's a lot of facial tattoos in Inuit. Oh, excuse me. Chin, chin, and side of the eye, side of the face. And that's also done with this sewing technique.
00:28:33
Speaker
Maybe you should have my honest guess in Alaska. She's learning quite a lot about historical stuff as well. She's on a quest. The process basically is make an eyed needle, dip the shortcut thread into tattoo ink, puncture the skin with the needle, pass the needle and thread through. The thread itself leaves.
00:28:56
Speaker
pigment under the skin and quite a lot of it. I think as well part of what she'd explained is that within their population the skin is a little bit different than like my skin as a Caucasian person so I think it comes you know we got data for our project we can now identify skin stitch tattoos if we see them on you know mummies because they have a specific mark that they leave the
00:29:22
Speaker
The pattern is traceable. The foot paint of it, the signature of it is traceable. So there was those two, I also did. Oh, that's all right. Hand poking with a deer bone needle, hand poking with a copper needle, hand poking with a standard tattoo needle for kind of like a, what do you call that? Control. Control, thank you. And tapping with a single point tool, hand tapping with a combed tool, and oh, I feel like I'm forgetting one and Aaron's probably gonna laugh at me.
Innovations in Tattoo Archaeology
00:30:01
Speaker
And then of course, so I imagine in many, many years to come when you unfortunately are no longer with us, you're going to mummify and therefore future scientists will be able to analyze your skills. My wife rolls her eyes when I talk about that, but yes, that's actually still the plan. Yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker
I need to meet a... Sure, why not? I need to meet a mummification specialist who's younger and healthier than myself. Probably a grad student. Yes, I mean, that is dedication to the course, I must say. I'm excited, you know? Who doesn't want to be mummified and left in a tomb? I think I'm gonna spend most of my, like, fifties building an elaborate tomb. It's gonna be awesome.
00:30:46
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. That's fantastic. Oh, well, maybe, maybe if I'm around, I look forward to seeing it, but hopefully I won't be because it'll be many years to come. But anyway, very cool. Very cool. I mean, because yes, of course, that is also something I imagine the tattoos that you see. I'm going to ask Aaron about this a bit more as well next month, but I'm curious on your opinion of it as from the artistic perspective or from the art perspective, it must be quite different
00:31:13
Speaker
or quite difficult to identify the technique and the tool on a modified body compared to a live healed body. Yes. And Aaron has a lot more, let's say, technical information about why that's true.
00:31:28
Speaker
So that would be like the mummification process where the epidermis tends to not survive. It has a lot to do with it. But what we can also say is it's a pretty safe bet to say that Egyptian tattooing methods were not done via the hand tapping method, although it's commonly thought of as the world's oldest method. It's very regionally specific to Southeast Asia and Polynesia. It doesn't seem to pop up in other places.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of, what would that be, ethnographic data to consider when making claims about which mummies have which tattoo process.
00:32:03
Speaker
Which I was also going to ask actually, in terms of the techniques and the tools that you just mentioned for this experiment, was that based mainly on kind of ethnographic studies? Was it also based on archaeological ones that you didn't know where they could have come from? I mean, are there archaeological tools or things from archaeology that don't survive that haven't continued in tattooing traditions?
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, probably. I'd have to give it some thought. To answer the first part of that question, we wanted a broad spectrum of different techniques so that we could isolate and point out different individual differences. So we kind of took a kind of broad. So we didn't include Sakyant, which would be Southeast Asian. The angle. The fix to a long stick. And we didn't include Tibori.
00:32:50
Speaker
We could do that in the future. I don't want that to be my last EXARC project regarding tattoos because it was such a really fun success. And we have other potential archaeology projects coming up. Aaron and Dr. Gino Kispari and I are looking at berserk tattoos from the Altai. You're working with Gino as well. It's such a cool world.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, we're just getting started. It started off with a conversation looking at whether or not you can tell the difference in the tattooing work done on different tattoos on a single mummy. And it's that interesting. And then it also involved me getting ahead of myself taking on more projects than I had time for.
00:33:32
Speaker
building what would be my best guess at what the traditional tool would have been for that culture to make the tattoos that we're seeing. Because although the Scythians and Sarmatians overlapped, and because they were culturally not very different from each other, we have Sarmatian tattooing tool kits, but no tattooed mummies from Sarmatia. We don't know what their tattoos would have been like. We do have mummies from the Bizeric, which would have been a subgroup of the Scythian Empire.
00:33:58
Speaker
And we don't have any tattooing tools from that culture, only the mummies that have tattoos. So I'm making a tool that would be my best guess at what we'd be looking for in the archaeological record. And most of it is biodegradable, which is probably why we're not finding much. Exactly, yeah. Right, yeah. Because I mean, I'll post some of that stuff pretty soon. So maybe if people are curious, I'll post my progress on that.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, this episode will be released, when will this one be released? End of January, so. Cool. I guess hopefully by then. I'm going to have it done by then, yeah. There you go, that's your deadline. But amazing, yeah, because I guess that's similar to like studies on clothes and things as well, that the clothes themselves aren't actually, you know, early clothes are not preserved in the archaeological record. So there's so much imagination used of what they could do. And I imagine as well, when it comes to tattoos, if you use different methods,
00:34:47
Speaker
with the same tool, does that also lead or is that just not possible? Like if you would have the same tool and would use different methods with that tool, would that be possible? A and would that leave? If it is possible, would that leave different tattoo types as well? I suppose yes, I can think of the example being imagine these large what we're calling comb needles from from Polynesia.
00:35:07
Speaker
It's a wide, you know, plate with little needles at the bottom and a row attached to the end of a stick. Now if you tap it straight down, it makes a line of dots. If you tap it straight down several times in one spot, it makes a straight line, like a filled line, you know? Okay.
00:35:22
Speaker
And then if you turn it sideways and move up and down, it can fill in black or you can change angles. So if you're watching those tattoos come into fruition, that tool can do a lot. It can make lines, it can make thin lines, and it can fill solid areas. That would be an example of one that's quite differently shaped than many others, and it is multifunctional. But a single spike, like a single sharp point, is pretty limited in what it can achieve.
00:35:51
Speaker
I mean, it's not. It just takes time. You can create a large complex tattoo with it, but it would take time. And it's not a great tool to do things like pack in a lot of black. So for these mummies from like Pezerec and things like that, they would probably be using a shading tool, a multi-pronged tattooing implement, which would keep ink trapped between tightly bound needles through surface tension that could be repeatedly poked into the skin.
00:36:21
Speaker
And it covers more area with each poke than just a single needle. Almost like a big thick highlighter, kind of like just going across everything. Interesting. And then you mentioned earlier that the cutting also, if you're using the cutting technique with blades, it's only possible to create, I guess it's hard to do like curves and things if you have a blade or? It is, because most of the time the blades we're making are shaped a bit like a thumbnail, right? You know, it has a curved surface to it, right?
00:36:50
Speaker
And that curved surface doesn't like to get turned sideways in skin. It prefers to cut straight lines. It leaves very recognizable marks because it has an entry cut and then an exit where it's thinner on both ends, tapered on both ends.
Future Plans and Advice
00:37:05
Speaker
That's one of the easiest to identify. And that, if you know, I'm recalling what I talked about a minute ago, is the eighth tattoo in that.
00:37:17
Speaker
It was claimed that Utsi, everybody's favorite ice man, was tattooed via cutting techniques. But that claim is probably disproven now because we have decided to back it up.
00:37:33
Speaker
Our best guess based on our analysis of different tools, techniques, ethnographic data is that he was probably tattooed with a bone spike and or copper spike because he had a copper headed axe. We wanted to include a copper needle in our tests. You speak with Aaron more about that. His analysis really covers that kind of things well. And he's the one that actually wrote up our little article about that information.
00:37:59
Speaker
Oh, wow. I look forward. I will definitely be questioning him about that. Well, thank you so much. We're going to have another quick break now so that our listeners can top up their tea and get themselves a snack, but we will be back very soon.
00:38:13
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. I hope that the teacups are now fuller and the biscuit jar is emptier. So, Daniel, we already did introduce you and kind of a bit of your experience and how you got into this at the start of the episode, but I always like to go a little bit more detailed into that now in terms of how this relates to what you do and how your experience with this has been.
00:38:32
Speaker
So first of all, you've already mentioned a lot, you collaborate with archaeologists, with other tattoo artists to look at these ancient tattoos. But would you say there's maybe a little bit of a difference in how you approach the kind of the research or the research questions compared to, shall we say, a more traditional inverted quotes, academic approach to the topic? Yeah, that's actually a really good question. So I'm a layman, I have no professional
00:38:57
Speaker
archaeological training or university education. But I have a photographic memory and that seems to serve me really well in doing some of this research. That would be so useful. I wish. And so it's also pretty interesting. Aaron and I met up to do some pretty outrageously fascinating research over the summer in Europe. And you can ask him a little bit more about this because I'm not sure all of what I'm supposed to talk about.
00:39:25
Speaker
But suffice it to say we were doing infrared photography to discover previously unknown tattoos and a lot of them. I believe if I'm correct in saying it is currently the largest collection of heavily tattooed individuals from the ancient world ever documented.
00:39:43
Speaker
Oh, exciting. Well, we were over in Europe, we got to do a presentation together about tattoo archaeology. So he had a slideshow prepared and he went through a lot of what he does. And one of the slides, the very first one had a ceramic figurine or certainly like a ceramic, yeah, I suppose a clay mask of some kind from
00:40:09
Speaker
It might have been Chimo culture, I can't quite remember, but it has examples of what were likely tattoos as part of the engraving in the ceramics. And they flow where tattoos would flow on the face, they make sense to have been markings that were copied onto the pottery from a living individual's face as the reference.
00:40:27
Speaker
And what part of the world is that, sorry? I can't quite remember. South America somewhere. I would say maybe China culture. Anyway, he and I were preparing our presentation and he was preparing the slideshow and I was just looking at the images he had prepared so we could talk about them. And I was looking at that one. I had never seen this particular clay image, you know, clay creation before. And I told him like, wow, that one's great. I love the eagle coming down the eye.
00:40:51
Speaker
He's like, what? That's the head. These are the wings. The tail comes up like this. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, that's great. And I asked, you know, I don't want to embarrass him, but I asked him, like, how many hours have you spent looking at this image? A lot, man.
00:41:10
Speaker
This is where he and I are such a great team, because his analytical brain with the patience to dig through the data, to get the hard science going and things like that, and with the expertise that he's gotten through professional education, and my ridiculous approach to, I'm just going to science it as hard as I can, as fast as I can, and I don't care about the consequences, less photographic memory.
00:41:40
Speaker
I'll be the one that cuts up my leg with sharp rocks and you're the one that analyzes the thousands of pictures. Oh yeah, I'll do that too. So anyway, he and I are dynamic duo. We've been involved in a lot of projects together and I think it's just going to get to be more and more. We have some pretty exciting invitations coming up for this autumn. I'm not sure where they stand so I can't talk about them yet.
00:42:05
Speaker
No, that's fine. So for those listening, we're recording this indeed back in 2023. I'm not too busy over the Christmas break and everything trying to get in contact with guests. But indeed, hopefully by the time this gets released at the end of January, maybe I might be able to add some more links into the show notes. So I'll have a look there in case there's some exciting extra papers that we've been teasing you about here.
00:42:28
Speaker
But in terms of the sort of tattoos themselves and the methods and things like that, we already talked a little bit about kind of what all of the different tools can do, what the different methods can do and how you do that. But according to kind of your own experience of being tattooed, of using these techniques and these tools and that kind of thing, would you say that they're
00:42:47
Speaker
would be advantages to some more or disadvantages as in would there be some that you feel okay well if they had access to this kind of tool or method surely they would prefer this or something like that I don't know this is a very I know random vague question I wasn't sure
00:43:02
Speaker
I think that it definitely comes down to culturally specific tattoo styles match the tools that they have access to or the tools that they traditionally make. It's the right tool for the job. Nobody's using the wrong tool for the job. And then continuing that tradition over hundreds of years, you know? So whether they had if they had access to really good obsidian, they might have been using that if they had access to copper, they were probably using that. What is it form?
00:43:29
Speaker
Form follows function, if I recall. People have been clever for a very long time, fully capable of creating the right tool for the job for 100,000 years. I'm not saying tattooing is necessarily that old. I'm just saying that.
00:43:47
Speaker
I wouldn't put it past anybody to give it a little thought and then say, oh, actually, if I make it like this, it will perform this function with more ease or speed. So I think the styles in specific cultures and the tools that make the tattoos evolve together in tandem.
00:44:06
Speaker
And actually on that note, because I remember one of my lecturers always saying to me, just because it's the most efficient way doesn't mean people in the past wanted it, you know, like, you know, we live in a capitalist society, industrialization, we want everything to be as quick as possible, as efficient as possible. But maybe people wouldn't have done that in the past. Do you know of any examples of kind of tattooing traditions where it's the process, it's the whole, you know, it shouldn't be fast, I guess? Or is it because it's cutting skin and everything? Is it generally assumed that it was
00:44:35
Speaker
done quickly. A lot of this really is a broad question. Sorry. Ask that same question to Aaron as well. But my answer would be, I'm curious what he would say. My answer would be that we do see different tattooing
00:44:53
Speaker
What would that be? Different moments come about in the life of a person in, let's say, a tattooing culture where that culture may collect tattoos which relate to family status or social status or accomplishments, achievements, achievements of your father, how many children you have, things like that. They might also have tattoos that are a
00:45:15
Speaker
a first tattoo that you get let's say like a rite of passage where you get this one if you've done this it's it's that's a really black and white kind of statement so when you let's take the tattooing traditions of Borneo when I went over there I was learning a lot about the art the history the techniques and what I was told is that
00:45:36
Speaker
as the men would receive their marks that identified them as one tribe or another, or they'd be getting marks for various reasons. The reasons are really complex. It doesn't just have to do with tribal identification, but the young boys would be really curious and hanging out around the men wishing it was their turn, but it wasn't. So they would do little cheeky tattoos on the side of little like fish hooks, you know, or like just something
00:46:01
Speaker
Then they could say, oh, look, I got one too, you know, I'll be a man next year and then I can get a real one. But now I've got this little fish hook for good luck in fishing. And those were made with hand poking and they weren't really part of a tattooing tradition, but they would have been just a dipping your toe in the water kind of thing.
00:46:18
Speaker
A further way to answer that question is part of what we were observing when we were doing that exciting research recently with the infrared, is that in the culture we were observing the tattoos from, what we need to analyze more data, but what we think we are seeing is an incision technique
00:46:38
Speaker
very commonly used for some motifs but not all and in some parts of the body but not all and commonly used to make a sort of wristband of incised lines and then sometimes we see that that wristband is then later hand poked because maybe it wasn't dark enough.
00:46:56
Speaker
So I don't think that I would say it's very rare to find strict rules about what might have been happening in the ancient world. I think we're seeing the result of the marks that people have made and people are creative and flexible and individualistic. And I think it'd be very hard to make very black and white broad strokes about who's doing what and that it was always that way or something like that. Because in what we've really recently analyzed in those infrared pictures is that
00:47:26
Speaker
That one culture, I think we discovered four different techniques they were using. Oh, wow. So it's a mixing pot. Yeah. Oh, hey, no, that's very interesting. Yeah. Ingenuity. That's what it is. It's real ingenuity. It's solving problems, answering questions, getting people to where they need to be in their tattoo journey and crafting the tools to do so.
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. And in terms of we sort of spoke a little bit already right at the very beginning about your customers or your clients or however you'd like to call them. I'm never sure with artists what the person buying the art would be called. But how they react when they see that you have a mammoth ivory needle or something.
00:48:12
Speaker
But how many of them are already interested? Because I imagine if people are coming to you, they know your technique and your style and that kind of thing. So were they already generally interested in that prehistoric inspiration of things or how many of them kind of learned through the tattooing process, would you say?
00:48:28
Speaker
The number is growing for the people who would now seek me out for my specialty in the tattooing world and it's incredibly satisfying because it's been a lot of work to run a successful Instagram account and explain to people one at a time why I love what I do and how I find it's important and why I want to discover more about it and do this art in New Zealand.
00:48:53
Speaker
It's not common for people to understand very much about European Eurasian prehistory. They understand that it is a thing. They know that there are painted caves, but I wouldn't say it's commonly understood the age of the caves or the significance of the imagery or things like that.
00:49:10
Speaker
I guess it's such a strong tattooing tradition in New Zealand already. In New Zealand, there are very strong tattooing traditions amongst the Maori and Pacific populations. But also the Pakea, the people who are foreigners to this land have... This is the most heavily tattooed country in the world. There are tattoo shops in every town, every city, and it's the wild west of tattooing out here. It's really an amazing place to work.
00:49:36
Speaker
But the people don't know very much about the specialties I have. So for me, I expect that when I move to France in April, I will be speaking with people who are aware and excited about Art of the Paleolithic. Probably have just got a visit in the game. I've had some people. Yes.
00:49:53
Speaker
So that's the plan is to set up right in the middle of where all the caves are and open a shop that says, come in, I like this stuff too. Oh, yeah, that'd be perfect. Yeah. But yeah, I've had some people travel from other countries to come get tattoos for me. And that's such an honor, you know, to reach a point where that's that kind of thing is happening. Well, I remember seeing when you were doing your tour through Europe, so many of my colleagues were like, oh,
00:50:19
Speaker
Okay, this is our chance. We're gonna go and get the tattoo from, you know, from Daniel because it was like, yes, he's in this part of the world. Yeah, I did get a few archaeologists over the summer. Yeah, I think Ava, my friend Ava did. Oh, it's your friend as well. Oh, great. Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah, and to this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many, so many people I saw and went, oh.
00:50:41
Speaker
One day, maybe one day. I admit I'm one of those good scared people. You can just come visit us because we're going to live in such a beautiful place. Come visit us, see the caves. That's going to be my draw, my hook line. Don't you want to see the caves?
00:50:58
Speaker
And I plan to set up within 50 meters of the French National Museum of Prehistory, which is where I want to set up my tattoo studio. I'm quite excited. And then I'd like to work as a security guard at night and just press my face up against the glass and go, eee! That's the plan.
00:51:22
Speaker
There you go. If anyone's walking around the museum at night and sees a tattooed man pressing his face against glass, that's why you know who that would be. Well, it's me. I'll be working there as a security guard at night. If you're like, yeah, it's fine. Just keep walking around. It's okay. Just leave me in peace. Take the china. It's okay. Take the coffee mugs. I don't care. Just leave me alone. This is an Italian bison. Oh my god. Oh my god.
00:51:48
Speaker
So for those of people listening who may be either in terms of kind of art or tattooing or another kind of art or creative process, I ask all of my guests, those of them who have specialised in sort of one might say more of a niche topic, I guess, within the kind of broader artistic topic.
00:52:06
Speaker
What kind of advice would you give? What, if you look back at kind of your own path in finding, you're kind of finding yourself as a tattoo artist, what would you have done differently? Basically, yeah, if you could see a younger version of yourself, what would you say to them? What advice would you give to them?
00:52:21
Speaker
I suppose it depends a lot about who that person is, what their motivation is, and how they want to pursue it. For me, my tattooing career started at the same time as my parenting life, so I've been doing it as a small family business from the beginning, and that's been a huge part of my journey.
00:52:39
Speaker
My best advice would be to find a teacher who matches your goals, passions, objectives and commit to that relationship because for me that has worked out so beautifully and now I'm trying to return the favor karmically and teach somebody else and I'm finding that very fulfilling as well. So I think as well the best thing I've done in my career is use social media
00:53:05
Speaker
to reach out and just contact the people you would like to be speaking to. Because a few years ago, you and Aaron and Gino and Tasha, these were people who I looked up to. But you were role models, but not colleagues. And now, because I reached out and started speaking to people, your colleagues, I get to participate in this world, even though I don't have any certification I have.
00:53:30
Speaker
something to offer. And I guess the confidence to take a step towards, you know, bigger things is it can be intimidating, but it can also reward you with the greatest and most fulfilling things you're doing for your professional life. So yeah, take confident steps, I guess would be my advice.
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah, I would just echo that as well and say to people listening because I did some very similar stuff to people on Instagram and things as well who I looked up to and was like, and then at some point I was like, I'll just message and just say, Hey, you know, I was wondering if I could ask you some questions. And yeah, they replied and we're really friendly. And you know, then we collaborated and now we're friends. And then everybody's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Look at us now. This is great.
00:54:15
Speaker
Well, we've talked a lot about a couple of upcoming projects, but is there anything else that you would, you know, last chance to do some more plugging before we wrap up? Anything else exciting on the horizon or any other projects coming up? I'm putting a lot of attention to my move, my upcoming move. We've got to sell our house and so I've got to sell my tattoo studio, finish training my apprentice. I've got to study French, things like that. I'm pretty busy.
00:54:41
Speaker
But yeah, I'm working on a little bit of reconstructive illustrations of Pezerec tattoos with Aaron and Gino, looking at differences that were not illustrated quite correctly by the original excavators, because I assumed they had a mummy that was deteriorating and trying to sketch it really quickly. And that state was not really possible. And then the skin blackened, and then without infrared, they couldn't see the tattoos. So now with a little bit of new technology, we've got some imagery we can work with.
00:55:09
Speaker
answering some new questions there. I don't know how that's going to be published, but it's going to be pretty cool. And I hope to be doing a bit more stuff with experimental archaeology, looking at Egyptian tattooings, tools, techniques, methods. I had spoken a bit with Dr. Ann Austin about that before, a PhD Egyptologist, but I also got very busy.
00:55:30
Speaker
I guess that one's probably on the back burner. But looking into specific tool research for other specific cultures and replicating that same kind of project where we analyze tool marks and expand that database would be something I'm always going to be working towards in some way or another.
00:55:49
Speaker
You're going to be covered with tattoos by the end of it. Yeah, I know. And this new tattoo studio hopefully in April in the heart of Dorton in France, right where all the caves are, right where there's prehistory. It's in the center of a few museums and stuff. So if you are into that, I would love it if you come and visit me in my space there. I'll be starting up a studio called Ancestral Arts.
00:56:14
Speaker
Oh, hey, you're changing the name there. Perfect. Well, thank you very much for joining me today, Daniel. That marks the end of our tea break. If anyone wants to find out more about all of the things we've been talking about today, or tattooing tools in general, do check the show notes. And very excitingly, we will be hearing even more about tattoos next month, where I'll be joined by Arendita Wolf, who we've spoken about today.
00:56:37
Speaker
And for those of you who are members of the Archaeology Podcast Network, there's even more exciting news because both Daniel and Aaron will be joining me together in a special bonus episode to talk a bit more about their recent collaborative research projects. So make sure to keep an eye on that.
00:56:52
Speaker
I hope that everyone enjoyed our journey today. If you want to help support this show and of course all of the other amazing series that form the Archaeology Podcast Network, you can become a member. You'll be helping us to create even more amazing content and more bonus content and ad-free episodes. For example, also we have bonus content our quarterly online seminars looking at different topics within archaeology. For more information on all of this, check out our homepage at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. See you next month!
00:57:18
Speaker
I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:57:29
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.