Thesis abstract:

«p»Throughout world history, tattooing has been practiced by many (if not most) cultures, including within various European contexts from prehistory through to the early modern period. There is a significant corpus of evidence from ancient authors relating to the practice of tattooing in the ancient Mediterranean in the broad period of 500 BCE to 500 CE, where it is often found in a penal or punitive context. However, among neighbouring cultures – notably the Scythian, Thracian, and Insular Celtic cultures – tattooing appears to have been practiced as a marker primarily of high social status. Early Christians, despite later assumptions and prohibitions regarding tattooing, were also a part of the ancient tattooed world, and this continued into the early medieval period. It is possible that the special influence of late antique eastern Christianity such as that of the ‘Desert Fathers’ within which tattooing was most obviously located, upon early Insular Christianity allowed for the survival of the practice after the conversion of many Insular people to Christianity from the fourth and fifth century CE onwards.«/p» «p»This study will utilise a comparative approach to identifying physical and literary evidence for tattooing within an Insular context in the millennium between the first literary references to Britain in the third century BCE up to the period of the Viking incursions of the late eighth to mid ninth centuries CE. Tattooing was practiced during these centuries within both a Roman context as well as an indigenous tattooing tradition amongst certain Celtic-speaking peoples. Furthermore, a third layer is that of the interaction between early Christian tattooing and that which occurred in a pre- and non-Christian context.«/p» «p»One of the many challenges in identifying evidence for tattooing comes from within the texts themselves, as many of the translated works relating to or describing this period of Insular history are reliant upon outdated dictionary definitions of key words and phrases. This study will aim to re-examine and, in some cases, re-translate these literary sources, as well as identify new sources describing tattooing and/or tattooed people. Another major challenge is an environmental one, as there is very little organic material, and no human tissue, which has survived from this period that is proof of the practice of tattooing. However, there is a small corpus of material artefacts that could be seen as potential depictions of tattooed people as well as tattooing implements and paraphernalia which will be re-assessed in this study. And finally, the greatest challenge arguably comes from within the academy, as a discussion of the historiography of Insular tattooing will demonstrate that until very recently, the evidence was either dismissed, downplayed, or ignored by most Celtic Studies scholars. Set within broader cultural perceptions of tattooing within the nineteenth and twentieth century, such an attitude is understandable even as it is at odds with the evidence.«/p» «p»Following the compilation and reassessment of the evidence for Insular tattooing within this period, this study will then suggest a model for understanding and identifying the phenomena of Insular cultural tattooing, as well as proposing an historical timeline for its practice and eventual demise.«/p»