Inked: Oldest Known Tattooing Instruments Discovered

Figure 1: Turkey bones established as tattooing instruments (Source: Deter-Wolf et al. 2021)

 

Tattooing has existed for several millennia and found cross culturally around the globe.  The motivations for tattooing vary by culture, as do the images immortalized on individual’s bodies.  There has been a great deal of study of both past and present tattooing traditions, but there remain gaps in our knowledge, particularly pertaining to ancient tattooing practices.  Fortunately, a recent study has provided some filling of some of those gaps by identifying the oldest tattooing devices thus far discovered.

 

In 1985 excavations at the multicomponent site of Fernvale in central Tennessee yielded what was initially considered a rather unremarkable discovery.  Found nearby the burial of an adult male (25-55 years of age) was a tool kit containing six turkey bones (Figure 1) and several shells covered in red and black pigment.  This took kit was wrapped in a Canidae skin and intentionally buried with the deceased male.  No further analyses were done on the artifacts, and they were recorded in the initial inventory as being a ”tool kit”, associated with the age of the site of somewhere between 5,520 and 3,620 years ago.

 

Reanalysis of these artifacts, however, yielded a rather remarkable discovery.  The reanalysis took the form of three separate analyses: microscopy, involving the microscopic analysis of the wear patterns on the turkey bones; elemental analysis, meaning a chemical examination of the residues on the bones; and contextual assessment, a review of the original placement of the artifacts when initially discovered.  This three pronged approach demonstrated a three fold support for the researchers’ final conclusions: they had discovered an ancient tattooing tool kit, complete with tattooing instruments. 

 

The microscopy analysis relied on an experimental archaeological study wherein deer bones were modified and used to tattoo pig skin (a practice novice tattoo artists use when learning and honing their craft).  The wear patterns on the deer bones matched those found on the turkey bones, providing the first line of evidentiary support.  The elemental analysis confirmed the presence of red and black pigments on the turkey bones, along with their presence on accompanying stained shells.  This provided the second line of evidence.  The location of the tool kit, being both in a burial and placed in a significant position in relation to the deceased’s body, further supported the conclusion that this was a tattooing tool kit and that these were tattoo instruments. 

 

This alone was a monumental discovery since so few tattooing instruments have been found in antiquity.  Because most (if not all) of these ancient tools would have been constructed from organic materials their likelihood of preserving in the ancient archaeological record is greatly reduced.  Furthermore, it is difficult to appropriately identify tools as tattooing instruments if one does not have a model to go off of.  But what makes this find even more remarkable is that the date for when tattooing began was pushed back a thousand years, making this the world’s oldest tattooing instruments!

 

Bibliography

Bower, B. (2021, May 25). The oldest known tattoo tools were found at an ancient Tennessee site. Retrieved from Science News: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/oldest-tattoo-tools-tennessee-native-american

Deter-Wolf, A., Peres, T. M., & Karacic, S. (2021). Ancient Native American bone tattooing tools and pigments: Evidence from central Tennessee. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 1-10.

No Author. (2021, May 26). Tennessee’s Tattooing Tools Dated to More Than 5,500 Years Ago. Retrieved from Archaeology Magazine: https://www.archaeology.org/news/9717-210526-native-american-tattoo

 

 

 

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Christine Schreyer, Hollywood Conlanger

Dr. Christine Schreyer (Image Source: University of British Columbia)

 

Language is a uniquely human creation.  It is also a central part of culture as it helps create, proliferate, and bind people together under a cultural identity.  Language, much like all cultural elements, is manufactured and retooled by humans, even if we do not consider or realize how language changes.  With this in mind it should come to no surprise that there are a variety of new languages constructed regularly for various purposes, which are referred to as constructed languages, or conlangs for short.  Some of that come to mind include languages tied to business, commerce, or politics, such as Esperanto, but there are others, such as Klingon or Kryptonian, that are just as valid but formed for alternative purposes.  Today’s blog post will explore conlangs, introduce Dr. Christine Schreyer, an academic linguistic anthropologist who also works with Hollywood producers as a conlanger (language constructer), and address how understanding the creative process of both creating and spreading conlangs can aid in saving endangered languages.   

 

Constructed languages (conlangs) have been studied by linguists in various forms and ways.  Early linguistic study on language creation focused on pidgin and creole languages but has since branched out into the wholesale creation of new languages for professional (e.g., business and literature/arts) and personal reasons.  There has been a recent, renewed interest in the study of conlangs because of the uptick in their creation and growing interests among various groups to learn them, particularly among sci fi and fantasy enthusiasts.  This is in part why Dr. Christine Schreyer became interested in studying them.  As a linguistic anthropologist at the University of British Columbia she wanted to understand the growing interest in and desire to learn conlangs, particularly as the choice to learn conlangs is deliberate and requires dedicated time and effort among learners since these are second or third languages learned and often are not to fulfill professional but instead personal desires.  She believed that by understanding what motivated individuals to learn conlangs she could apply that to preserving endangered languages.  Through her early research into this area of study wherein she studied the movie Avatar’s conlang Na’vi she learned that Na’vi language learners were inspired to learn the language for several reasons.  Individuals who worked on learning Na’vi found a sense of belonging and community among others who were doing the same thing, and they also shared common interests in the environmental conservation angle found both in the language and film.  In fact, shared interests in languages and identity are a key aspect found by various scholars that drives individuals to continue to learn a specific language, conlang or not. 

 

As Schreyer began sharing what she learned about fictional sci-fi and fantasy genre conlangs with both scholars and the public her work caught the attention of Hollywood producers.  There has been a commitment to create realistic languages within sci-fi and fantasy films because the fans demand it, leading producers to employ linguists to create those very languages.  This resulted in Schreyer being contracted to create languages for various projects, including the Kryptonian language for “Man of Steel,” Eltarian for “Power Rangers,” Beama (Cro-Magnon) for “Alpha” and Atlantean for “Zack Snyder’s Justice League.”  Schreyer uses her linguistic anthropological knowledge to create these languages, starting first with generating the language’s sound system, followed by moving on to morphological composition of the language, meaning how to put those sounds together to create words.  This leads to the natural progression of syntax, the rules and grammar system of the language.  She even delves into the study of historical linguistics, studying proto-languages to identify how languages may have sounded in the past in order to create historically accurate languages for specific films (e.g., Alpha). 

 

All of this has not taken Schreyer away from her original research interest: language preservation.  She is actively applying the lessons she has learned about conlangs to this research topic.  She discovered that the elements that allowed for the production and cultivation of Na’vi speakers, which include social media, recordings, and locations (virtual or otherwise) where people can converse, can be used to save endangered languages.  She has begun integrating these into communities and among speakers where endangered languages exist, thereby promoting the preservation and revitalization of languages that may now not become extinct and bringing her scholarly and applied research activities full circle.

 

Works Cited

Holmes, Bob. "To learn Klingon or Esperanto: What invented languages can teach us." Knowable Magazine 8 December 2021. Electronic.

Schreyer, Christine. "Constructed Languages." Annual Review of Anthropology (2021): 327-344. Print.

Wellborn, Patty. "UBC linguist creates language for Hollywood film Alpha." 23 August 2018. University of British Columbia. Electronic. 5 May 2022.