Some tattoos really age well, a new study finds.
More than 2,000 years ago, a woman sat down to get inked. Afterward, she rocked some sick tattoo sleeves. Her arms were inked with intense hunting scenes: prowling leopards, lanky stags — even a mythical, griffin-like creature.
Slight differences in style and technique hint that at least two artists drew her tattoos. One was quite skilled. The other was likely still learning. Yet the designs are elaborate. Even modern pros would find them hard to copy, says Gino Caspari. He’s an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. That’s in Jena, Germany.
“I hope people walk away with a deeper appreciation for the prehistory of the craft,” says Caspari. He also hopes to boost appreciation for “the people behind the ink — both the tattooer and the tattooed.”
Caspari was part of a team that shared details of the tattoo in the October issue of Antiquity.
Exquisite ink
Finding tattoos on prehistoric people is rare. Why? Skin decays quickly after death. But in Siberia, permafrost has preserved the bodies of several people from the Pazyryk culture. These horse-riding nomads roamed the Eurasian steppes millennia ago. The inked woman, who died at 50, was one of them.
Her tattoos are not visible to the unaided eye. But infrared cameras can pick them up. Her right forearm is masterfully inked. It shows two striped tigers and a spotted leopard interlocked with two stags. The design flows along her arm’s muscles.
Her left forearm is another story. Here, the animals are drawn more roughly and less accurately. The researchers suspect two artists — with different skill levels — drew her tattoos. Or perhaps the same artist did all the work at early and late stages of their career.
Straight to the point
The tattoos were likely made using pointed tools in a stick-and-poke technique, the team says. They conclude this partly from a past experiment done by one of the researchers, Daniel Riday. He’s an expert in ancestral art in southern France.
Riday had tattooed himself with models of prehistoric tools. Those tests showed the types of marks each tool could make. A multi-pointed tool probably made the thick lines on the Siberian woman’s arms. Meanwhile, fine lines around the stags’ antlers were likely etched by a single-point tool.
Archaeologists have not yet found evidence of those tools. That may be because they were made of thorn bundles or other organic materials. Those would have rotted and disappeared long ago, Caspari says.
Still, “it’s a fascinating look into the past of a talented [tattoo artist],” Caspari says. It’s also “a great addition to the prehistory of a craft that is important for people around the world today.”