Resurrecting Piercing: Experimental Archaeology at a Global Scale

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Across continents, material evidence of body piercing jewelry abounds in the archaeological record. However, the varying procedures and processes of piercing, healing, and stretching these wounds for adornment remains unfamiliar to most archaeologists. This PowerPoint presentation discusses the early self-experimentations that led to the development of the Euro-American body piercing industry. From the late nineteenth throughout the twentieth century, shared personal correspondence, illustrations, and photographs document the adaptations, innovations, successes, and failures that came to coalesce a current community’s collective knowledge. Understanding the processes of these secretive explorations provides insights into many of the cross-cultural practices of the past for which no clear records remain.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Body Modification: Examples and Explanations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36151.0