History and Cultures: where tattooing and body art come from

What this desk covers

The History and Cultures desk looks at where tattooing and other forms of body art come from. It covers the materials, tools and methods used across regions, and the social roles that marks have held, from status and kinship to spiritual protection and rites of passage. Each page sets a practice within the community that made it.

The desk also follows how body art has moved between places, through trade, travel, migration and the work of researchers and museums. Pages note where meanings have shifted over time and where a tradition is still practiced by the people who carry it. The aim is to describe these traditions accurately, without flattening them into a single story.

How the pages are organized

Pages are grouped by region and by theme. A regional page describes the marking practices of one area and the cultures connected to them. A thematic page follows a single motif or idea, such as protective symbols or marks of passage, across several places so readers can compare how each culture understood it.

Each page opens with its context and then moves to meaning and sources. Claims are tied to public sources such as museums, university collections and national libraries. Where scholars disagree or records are thin, the page says so plainly, so readers can see the difference between established knowledge and open questions.