Tattoos like these were used in England as late as 1871 to denote different types of crimes but have been used for many different reasons over the years. Photo Newcastle University

Tattoos may be currently fashionable, but a new exhibition at Newcastle University’s Museum of Antiquities is shedding light on what many may not realise is an ancient art.

The exhibition, Tattoo, running until December 21 2006, explores the history of tattooing in Britain and reveals some of the meanings behind symbols traditionally etched into the skin. It also demonstrates that some form of ‘body art’ has been practised in the British Isles for thousands of years.

Research has shown that Roman soldiers based at Hadrian’s Wall would have had a military tattoo, and the exhibition even explains the technique they would have used.

“It is a little-known fact, but it would appear that all of the legionaries and some of the auxiliaries on Hadrian’s Wall would have had a tattoo,” says the university’s Director of Archaeological Museums and expert on Roman history, Lindsay Allason-Jones.

Ancient symbols are often used in contemporary tattoos. Photo Newcastle University

Evidence for the practice comes from the Epitome of Military Science, written around the 4th century AD by the Roman chronicler Vegetius. He recounted that recruits to the legions would have to earn their tattoo once they had been tested by physical exercises.

“We do not know what this official mark looked like,” says Lindsay. “It was possibly an eagle or the symbol of the soldier’s legion or unit.”

The 6th century Roman doctor Aetius recorded that soldiers sported tattoos on their hands and detailed the method they used to create them, noting how leek juice was used as an antiseptic to wash the area to be tattooed.

Designs were pricked into the skin with pointed needles until blood was drawn before the ink was rubbed on, which was made of Egyptian pinewood, corroded bronze, gall (bile) and vitriol (sulphuric acid), plus more leek juice.

There is very little physical evidence of tattooing in ancient Britain because bodies were not mummified or preserved but the exhibition includes examples from preserved bodies found in the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Russia.

Newcastle University student Taylor Lauritson showing his tattoo of the Pompeii fresco next to a copy of the original. Photo Newcastle University

Staff in the museum are also inviting visitors to add photographs of their own tattoos and to leave their comments about what that particular design means to them. The exhibition looks at how many contemporary tattoos draw on symbols from the past, and some of the designs in the exhibition can be found on Anglo-Saxon objects at the museum.

A masters student at the university studying Roman archaeology even has a tattoo on his arm replicating a fresco found on a wall in the ill-fated city of Pompeii, buried during the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The exhibition explains the meaning of sailor’s tattoos, which are thought to date back to Captain Cook’s 18th century Pacific voyages, when sailors began to copy the highly tattooed Polynesians they met in Tahiti.

Anchors are thought to show that a sailor had crossed the Atlantic, an image of a fully rigged ship meant that they had sailed around Cape Horn and a shell-backed turtle that they had crossed the Equator.