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Placement · placement_back

Back

The whole posterior torso. Tier 1 attested as a placement in European tattoo history: “a representation of the crucifixion tattooed on a slave's back was said to preserve the bearer from a whipping”. Registered at this coarseness because a tier-3 placement value in this corpus is the bare label back; prefer placement_upper_back or placement_lower_back where a source is specific.
Thin
Medium confidenceneeds cultural review

0 attested · 2 promoted2 sources · T1

Cultural review required

This entry makes claims about a community's practice that nobody qualified has confirmed. Treat it as research in progress, not settled fact.

What the research says

placement_anatomy
Category
torso
Available area
The cited chart treats the two halves as separately large and the whole as extra-large.
Cultural flags
PLACEMENT-SCOPED CULTURAL MATERIAL ROUTED TO T11.10, NOT ENCODED HERE: the cited chart ties the full-back-plus-buttocks-plus-thighs extent to Japanese body suits, and T11.6 routed irezumi to T11.10 rather than registering it as a style. This row records the extent as a fact about the source and writes no tradition association.
Expansion path
“Upper back + Lower back” is one of the chart extra-large combinations. A second combination on that page - Full back + buttocks + back of thighs (traditionally used for Japanese body suits) - IS RECORDED BUT NOT REGISTERED AS A NODE. Naming a Japanese tradition body-suit extent as a generic placement is the tribal flattening in new clothes; T11.10 owns it.
Scale behavior
The largest single canvas the cited chart names outside its combinations: “A huge tribal design or Japanese tattoo with lots of elements will need a lot of space, like the person’s back or upper arm.” Neither style label in that sentence is reproduced as an association here.
Muscle direction
No fetched source describes the muscle direction of the back. Left blank rather than inferred.

Provenance

2 resolved

  • Tattoos in Europe: from slaves and sailors to kings and tsars (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 1

    Royal Museums Greenwich

    National Maritime Museum page. Verbatim: "Tattoos have adorned the highest born royals and the lowliest sailor in Europe for at least 5,000 years." Records Christian cross tattoos, Constantine's ban on facial tattooing around AD 325 and the 1862 Jerusalem Cross of the Prince of Wales. UPDATED BY T11.8c - the earlier note on this row said the religious material was left to T11.10, and that is no longer true, so it is corrected rather than left contradicting the data. motif_crucifixion now cites this page for “Much later, a representation of the crucifixion tattooed on a slave's back was said to preserve the bearer from a whipping.” A Tier 1 museum making a documented historical claim inside its own subject area is exactly what Tier 1 may establish. What stays routed to T11.10 is CONTEMPORARY DEVOTIONAL PRACTICE, which this page does not discuss.

    museum · retrieved 2026-08-30

  • Tattoo Placement Chart (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 2

    Tattooing 101

    Professional tattoo-education page and the primary placement source for this batch. It is the only fetched source that bands EVERY body area by the size of work it holds - small, medium, large and extra-large - which is what makes the available_area and scale_behavior columns answerable at all. It also supplies the fit rule (“a forearm tattoo shouldn’t wrap so far around the arm that it overlaps”), the design-expansion warning, and two orientation rules. IMPORTANT NEGATIVE FINDING, recorded because it bears directly on what this corpus may claim: the page states “Tattoo placements don’t have any specific meaning tied to them.” That is a Tier 2 trade claim about the modern Western commercial context in which the page is written. IT DOES NOT AND CANNOT SETTLE whether placement carries meaning or restriction in any cultural tradition - two Tier 1 museum sources in this same batch record placements that do. The claim is recorded, scoped, and NOT used to suppress a cultural placement rule anywhere in the corpus.

    professional tattoo source · retrieved 2026-08-30

Related concepts

2 links

Associated with · 2

  • ← incomingNew SchoolStyleThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from styles_seed.placement_tendencies of style_new_school ('back') [class EP]. PLACEMENT AXIS. Typed associated_with, not placement_supports: the packs use placement_supports only as placement -> composition (doc 01 'forearm -> placement_supports -> vertical_composition'; specimen rel_0004), and model motif -> placement as 'anatomy_fit', which is not in the locked 14. The placement_ target prefix carries the axis. The cited source states this placement. Provenance inherited from the parent row(s): source_tattooing101_new_school; source_tattooing101_styles_list; the first is carried in source_id. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.

  • ← incomingCrucifixionMotifThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationneeds cultural review

    Promoted from motifs_seed.placement_behaviors of motif_crucifixion ('back') [class EP]. PLACEMENT AXIS. Typed associated_with, not placement_supports: the packs use placement_supports only as placement -> composition (doc 01 'forearm -> placement_supports -> vertical_composition'; specimen rel_0004), and model motif -> placement as 'anatomy_fit', which is not in the locked 14. The placement_ target prefix carries the axis. The cited source states this placement. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.