Traditional Women’s Tattoos of Ambae

Traditional tattooing on Ambae once communicated women’s status, family relationships, and place within the island’s customary social system. High-ranking women known as bure could bear extensive geometric tattoos extending from the chest toward the calves. The number and placement of a woman’s tattoos were associated with rank, including the status of her father.

Many of the linear and geometric motifs were related to designs used in Ambae textiles. Tattooing was performed by women specialists, who could receive pigs as payment for their work.

According to information recorded during fieldwork on Ambae in 2006, the tattooing implement consisted of two orange-tree thorns bound to a wooden handle. The design was first marked on the skin, then made permanent by tapping the inked thorns with a second stick. The pigment was described locally as being prepared from the nangai tree.

Christian missionary influence contributed to the decline of traditional tattooing on Ambae. By the late twentieth century, researcher Nadia Kanegai had documented eight surviving bure, preserving knowledge of a women’s tradition that was already disappearing. These photographs, taken in 2006, document some of the remaining women who carried these historically significant tattoos.