Tattoo

Term applied to the practice of irreversibly marking the skin by puncturing the dermis and inserting an indelible pigment. The art is attested in almost every culture worldwide, but it is much rarer among the darker-skinned peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, Melanesia and Australia, where permanent body art tends to take the form of scarification and cicatrization (see AFRICA,

See the Abbreviations for further details.