Painful as it might feel, the practice of piercing a hole through the skin and inserting a piece of metal, bone, shell, ivory or glass to wear as an ornament has been around for millennia. Body piercing occurs worldwide and is practiced on men, women and children. It's grown in popularity during the past five years, especially among American teenagers, who pierce just about anything that can be pierced: ears, noses, tongues, and navels.
The most conventional form of piercing in the United States today is ear piercing. Among young and old, male and female, ear piercing is common practice and has become more mainstream for both sexes than it once was. Ear piercing can range anywhere from a single hole in one or both ears to holes along the entire rim of the ear.
Our reasons for piercing our bodies can change over time, and may vary from culture to culture. People living on the island of Cyprus 2200 years ago pierced their ears. But this evidence can also raise questions: Were earrings worn by both men and women then? Why did these ancient people wear gold bulls as adornment? Archaeologists and anthropologists are always seeking answers to questions like these. P> Our reasons for piercing our bodies can change over time, and may vary from culture to culture. For example, a pair of gold earrings (left) from the Museum's Ancient Greek World gallery can tell us that the people living on the island of Cyprus 2200 years ago pierced their ears. But this evidence can also raise questions: Were earrings worn by both men and women then? Why did these ancient people wear gold bulls as adornment? Archaeologists and anthropologists are always seeking answers to questions like these.
Among the Tlingit of southeast Alaska, we know that ear piercing was directly related to an individual's rank in society. Social position was determined by the wealth of the family into which the individual was born. Although a Tlingit could rarely better his own social standing, he could raise the station of his sister's children and his grandchildren by "potlatching" (hosting a community feast). At a potlatch the host paid a member of his moiety (group) to pierce the rims of the children's ears. At additional potlatches, other holes were added. A great amount of wealth was required to host the feast and pay the person to pierce the children's ears. Consequently, the resulting series of holes marked an individual as a member of the nobility.
January 7, 2002 - NY Times
An Irish body-piercer has helped to solve a Bronze Age mystery. A series of enigmatic gold Ñboxesæ and Ñbobbinsæ dating back more than 3,000 years seem to have been ear-spools, worn in an enormously distended perforation through the lobe.
"I happened to see Paddy O'Donoghoe on the Late Late Show," Mary Cahill of the National Museum in Dublin explains in Archaeology Ireland. "My immediate reaction was to shout 'He is wearing the Ballinesker boxes in his ears'. " In fact Mr O'Donoghoe, who runs a piercing parlour called Bodyshock in Dublinºs Temple Bar district, was wearing a modern gold spool in a perforation nearly 3in across.
He joined Ms Cahill at the museum, which has one of the finest collections of prehistoric goldwork in Europe, and helped to identify several pieces as ancient ear-ornaments. One type, known as 'boxes', look very like a pillbox, with straight walls: a set from Mullingar are between 2in and 3in in diameter and an inch deep, and would have been held in the earlobe simply by the elasticity of the flesh.
A second type has slightly concave walls, so that the lobe would have been stretched over the rim before retracting back in place to hold the earspool tightly; a third kind has a relatively small central cylinder which was passed through the ear before the much wider outer and inner discs were attached.
All were made of thin sheet gold, decorated with sets of concentric circles: recent rock-art discoveries in Ireland have shown that a form of scribing compass was used to produce perfect circles. Similarly distended earlobes are known from many other cultures, ranging from the pre-Hispanic Maya and Aztec, who used jade and obsidian earspools as well as gold, to contemporary Swahili women in Kenya. "Some of us may be surprised that our Bronze Age ancestors were practitioners of body-piercing," Ms Cahill says. "In order to distend the earlobe to the required size the process must be carried out over a long period by hanging weights from the perforation. It can be painful, and carries the dangers inherent in any para-surgical procedure."
Other enigmatic gold objects may also have been fitted to various body parts, she suggests: "It is not too outrageous to propose that prehistoric people in Ireland may have pierced the rim of the ear, the septum and wings of the nose, or the mouth. Many of the ornaments may have been exclusive, based on sex, age or status: we do not know what symbolism they carried, but they embodied powerful meanings, perhaps even magic."
Billed as the world's most pierced woman, Elaine Davidson, who has 1,093 piercings, from Brazil and resident in Edinburgh, and the man with the world's longest tongue, at 9.6cms from top lip protrusion point, Stephen Taylor from Coventry, England, pose at London's Tate Britain gallery to celebrate the book of Guinness World Records 100th millionth copy in print, Tuesday Nov. 11, 2003. - November 12, 2003 - Reuters
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