Body Tattoos and Piercings
Today,
walking down the street is like walking around an art museum. But instead of
paintings, photos, or sculptures, the artwork is displayed on a very different
canvas: the human body. The once taboo body artwork is on display for all to
see, from the punk rock concerts in urban cities to CEO’s of big corporations,
to soccer moms. Tattoos and body piercings is a very popular way for people in
this day and age to express themselves. This trend is becoming less taboo and
more commonplaces. Tattoos and piercings are two forms of body modification
that express symbolism and self expression, sometimes derived by religious or
cultural traditions, dating back hundreds of years.
Joan
Fletcher, a research fellow in the department of archaeology at the University
of York in Britain, describes the earliest illustrations of body art, “In terms
of tattoos on actual bodies, the earliest known examples were for a long time
Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 BC But
following the more recent discovery of the Iceman from the area of the
Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been
pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200
years old” (Lineberry, 2007).
Fletcher
also indicates that ....
