Culturing the Body: Past Perspectives on Identity and Sociality
Benjamin Collins · April Nowell
Mar 2024 · Berghahn Books
Ebook
326
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About this ebook
The human body is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences to a diverse audience. Hominins have been culturing their bodies, that is adding social and cultural meaning through the use pigments and objects, for over 100,000 years. There is archaeological evidence for practices of adornment of the body by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hominins, including personal ornaments, clothing, hairstyles, body painting, and tattoos. These practices have been variously interpreted to reflect differences such as gender, status, and ethnicity, to attract or intimidate others, and as indices of a symbolically mediated self and personal identity. These studies contribute to a novel and growing body of evidence for diversity of cultural expression in the past, something that is a hallmark of human cultures today.
About the author
Benjamin Collins is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, and the Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town. His research explores social networks and connections among past forager societies.
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