For millennia, astonishingly diverse forms of body art have been produced by cultures throughout the world. Some employed tattoos for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes, to mark special life achievements, or to assert social identity. Others marked the body with symbols intended to promote fertility, protect themselves from malevolent spirits, or carry them safely into the afterlife.

Lars Krutak, an anthropologist and host of the Discovery Channel’s “Tattoo Hunter,” shares his life’s journey to understand how tattoos “make” the people who wear them. From 3000 B.C.E. to the present, Krutak explores tattooing traditions and reveals how tattoos express cultural values, individual desires and fears, spirituality, and ancestral ties that are written on the body in ink.

Krutak’s latest book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink (Princeton University Press), is available for purchase.

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• Purchase your copy of Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink by Lars Krutak here.
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