LEMON THORNS : Ancient Tattoo Technologies

     On March 25th I posted this: LEMON THORNS
     On May 23rd I was contacted by a "Prehistoric Archaeologist" in Tennessee who is researching "ancient and indigenous tattoo technologies." He had stumbled across my blog post, and asked if I'd be willing to prune and send to him a few short branches with big thorns. I agreed, of course, because that's a really unusual request, and sounds like interesting research.

Lemon tattoo
(Not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     He is doing experiments replicating and testing non-metal tattoo implements, to create a library of microscopic use wear patterns that tattooing leaves behind on different tools. He hopes to use the data in the future to help identify tattoo implements in archaeological collections.

Tattooed lemon
(Also not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     Apparently there are a bunch of indigenous groups in Southeast Asia that historically used lemon thorns to tattoo. Other groups also used buckthorn, black locust, and osage orange. So if you have any of these trees with big thorns, go ahead and try giving yourself a homemade tattoo! Just use ball point pen ink. Isn't that what they use in prison?
     On second thought-- don't do that.
     Anyway, this archaeologist has been unable to assemble a collection of really big lemon thorns, and I will be surprised if he doesn't consider our tree's thorns "big." They're, like, 3 inches long.

Lemon NECK tattoo! Yikes! Why?!!
(Found this while googling lemon tattoos)