One of the challenges facing tattoo historians today is that many owners of historically significant material—from actual pieces of preserved human flesh to suggested patterns, some of them a little grotesque—don’t come forward to share their finds, out of fear that scholars and the public would dismiss the subject as superficial or repulsive. Undeterred, every year these historians are probing ever deeper into inking traditions worldwide. They are documenting rare tools and designs and uncovering provenance trails of tattooed body parts that were put on public display—often amid great controversy….
