Archaeologically, What Does Anything Actually Mean?

Arguably the most interesting question archaeology has to ask, is what have we dug up, and what does any of it actually mean? To even start to break down what material remains mean we first have to question how we are interpreting information. Archaeological thought has gone through several key iterations: antiquarians who were going around and nabbing anything they thought looked kind of cool without really wanting to know what any of it meant. Culture-historians who were obsessed with catagorising things into types (typologies) and calling these types a culture. Then came the processualists who were super into science and objectivity. And then there were the inventively named post-processualists who were more interested in our implicit biases along with the daily lives of past people rather as wells as society as a whole. I think the post-processualist interpretations are by far the most interesting, as archaeology really is a method of smashing a window through to past societies and looking at the way people were living their lives. So this article will be discussing how it is possible to look at past people’s lived experiences and what this can tell us about ideas of identity. 

One way that people expressed their identity in the past was through ornamentation - which can essentially be broken down into how they dressed and accessorised. Considering the way we present our bodies is very very public, it allows us to non-verbally tell everyone around us who we are. Yet, more often now archaeologists are saying that the way past people dressed doesn’t just indicate their identity, it also helps them construct that identity as ornamentation is an active process. My favourite example of ornamentation in the past is the permanent method of tattoos:

An interesting example to look at is Middle Kingdom Egypt where women were the ones getting tattoos - specifically khener dancers. Khener dancers frequently performed during the rituals of Hathor the goddess of motherhood and fertility - making it understandable that the dancers were primarily women. An example of these tattoos were found on the mummy of Hathoric priestess Amunet at Dier el-Bahari, with lozenge shaped tattoos on her abdomen and pubic area - which has been used to argue a reference to childbirth. Amunet’s mummy is also frequently compared with Middle Kingdom Faïence figurines (Image to left) which have a lozenge pattern in a similar place. 

There are different interpretations of these tattoos; functionality, an extension of clothing or sexuality. The functional perspective comes from the idea that the dancers would have performed in minimal clothing whilst completing acrobatic movements, so the tattoos would have created optical illusions as the dancers moved frenetically, therefore making the argument that the tattoos were done for a functional visual reason. In turn, this idea of nudity has been associated with prostitution given historic attitudes towards both the naked female body and a negative association with tattoos (which has hopefully changed - I plead as someone with a couple of tattoos…). A more interesting interpretation though is the idea that the regular arrangement of tattoos presents a textile motif (as seen on paddle dolls) and therefore tattoos could have been a practical replacement for clothing which was impossible to wear during acrobatic dance. 

But what does any of that have to do with identity? Well, the tattoos having a clear association with the cult of Hathor, which means they would have been an extra-somatic representation of the dancer’s religious affiliation. Moreover, the fact that women made up the groups of khener dancers means that the tattoos were inherently an expression of gender as well. Furthermore, the art of tattooing expresses personality and in this case a desire to belong to a specific group - and admittance to the Hathoric cult would also have provided a higher social status, meaning that the tattoos also indicate the social class of the women. 

This case study about Ancient tattoos, I hope, is indicative of the post-processualist idea that it is possible to interpret the lived experiences of past people in order to learn about their identity. Moreover, post-processualists like Ian Hodder have compared the archaeological record (all the stuff that archaeologists have found) to reading a book. Whenever someone reads a book they can interpret it however they want, and as time passes and ideas and attitudes change books are reinterpreted by the society they now exist in. The archaeological record is arguably the same - re-interpreted generationally as our understanding of internal biases changes. In relation to the khener dancer’s tattoos this is seen as the negative attitude towards tattoos (their association with prostitution) has changed meaning the Hathoric cult is now seen for their religious importance rather than their hypothetical (and arguably incorrect and sexist) role as sex-workers. 

References:

Hodder, I. 1999. Contextual Archaeology, 121-155 in Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Johnson, M. 1999. Common Sense is Not Enough, 1 – 11 in Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell: Oxford

Joyce, R. A. 2005. Archaeology of the Body. Annual Review of Anthropology. 34:139-158

Lobell, J. A., and Powell, E. A. 2013. Ancient Tattoos. Archaeology. 66(6):41-46

Rapisarda, V. 2023. ‘Wearing’ Tattoos in Ancient Egypt. Evidence from Middle Kingdom Mummies and Feminine Figurines, 157-171 in Gouy, A. (Ed.) Textiles in Motion: Dress for Dance in the Ancient World. Oxbow Books