{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "batok",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "Batok",
  "local": "batok",
  "local_lang": "Kalinga",
  "aliases": [
   "batek",
   "patik",
   "burik",
   "fatek",
   "whatok"
  ],
  "said": "Tapped, not poked — a thorn set crosswise on a stick and struck"
 },
 "region": [
  "island-southeast-asia"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "family": "tap",
  "status": "revived"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": -1500,
  "to": 2026,
  "circa": true,
  "label": "Hafted tattoo tools at Arku Cave before 1500 BCE; still being tapped in Buscalan"
 },
 "practice": {
  "method": "tap",
  "tool": "gisi-pat-ik",
  "ink": "soot-water",
  "placement": [
   "arms",
   "chest",
   "hands",
   "back",
   "legs"
  ],
  "marked": "both",
  "marks": "specialist",
  "status": "revived",
  "countries": [
   "PH"
  ],
  "first_record": -1500,
  "first_record_note": "chisel and serrated heads of probable hafted tattoo instruments, Arku Cave, Cagayan",
  "sessions": "acquired over years, a panel at a time",
  "note": "Men's chest work was earned by taking a head; women's arms by other measures."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The Philippine traditions, tapped with a hafted thorn at ninety to a hundred and twenty strikes a minute.",
  "story": "The Spanish called the Visayans *Pintados*, the painted ones, and recorded the tattoo as dress: a naked man \"appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work\" — worn at home with nothing but a loincloth, because the marks were the clothes.\n\nThe method is Austronesian and it is not poking. A needle — thorn, bone, horn, bamboo — is set perpendicular to a wooden handle in an L, and a second stick taps the handle. The hand that holds the tool never pushes; it positions. Ink is soot or ash in water, oil, cane juice or pig bile, and the design is laid out first in ink with a blade of grass or a length of string.\n\nAmong Cordilleran peoples tattoos were a form of clothing in the same explicit sense: to have none was to be naked. Chest work was not applied to a man until he had taken a head — which is why copying those designs today is held to be a bad idea, and why the men who fought in the 1960s and 70s were advised by elders not to take them.",
  "today": "Whang-od is ninety-something and tattooing in Buscalan; her apprentices are women, which breaks the inheritance rule her own community ran on, and her community accepted it. Around her there is a revival with a problem inside it: which designs are open."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "ธรรมเนียมฟิลิปปินส์ ใช้หนามติดด้ามแล้ว *ตอก* ด้วยไม้อีกอัน 90–120 ครั้งต่อนาที ไม่ใช่การแทงด้วยมือ"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "tap",
   "as": "The method, and why this site does not call it hand-poke.",
   "rel": "method"
  },
  {
   "to": "whang-od",
   "as": "Who is still doing it.",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "clothing",
   "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor\" — the third of the three.",
   "rel": "finding"
  },
  {
   "to": "arku-cave",
   "as": "The tools, dug up, older than the Roman Empire by a millennium.",
   "rel": "find"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Batok",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batok"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-batok",
  "s:wp-whang-od",
  "s:wp-kalinga-province"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-batok"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "tags": [
  "start-here",
  "revival",
  "initiation"
 ],
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "batok/batok-mambabatok.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Mambabatok.jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Mambabatok.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMambabatok.jpg",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
   "author": "CharMel Creations",
   "credit": "Own work",
   "alt": "This is popularly referred as 'batok' or art of tattooing your body with tribal designs using bamboo sticks and thorns. This artform is still alive in the mountains of Kalinga.",
   "date": "2023-03-27",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "eaa1f6579cf7c20edd8a05fecbaa915ccaff0e8f3ef9290bc421fd743998f053"
  }
 ],
 "x_clothing": {
  "quote": "appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work… their dress at home and in their barrio is their tattoos and a bahag",
  "lang": "Spanish, of Visayan work",
  "source": "s:wp-batok",
  "year": 1668,
  "garment": "armour"
 },
 "geo": {
  "lat": 17.3,
  "lon": 121.1,
  "precision": "region",
  "source": "s:commons"
 },
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "kalinga-cordillera",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Cordilleran whatok",
   "as": "The wider Philippine family this sits inside."
  },
  {
   "from": "konyak-naga",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Konyak marks",
   "as": "Same structure, different island: the chest is earned."
  },
  {
   "from": "tap",
   "type": "method",
   "name": "Tap",
   "as": "Where it is still being done daily."
  },
  {
   "from": "gisi-pat-ik",
   "type": "tool",
   "name": "Gisi and pat-ik",
   "as": "What it makes."
  },
  {
   "from": "gayaman",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The centipede",
   "as": "The tradition it belongs to."
  },
  {
   "from": "whang-od",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Whang-od Oggay",
   "as": "The tradition."
  },
  {
   "from": "clothing",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The tattoo is clothing",
   "as": "Handsome armor."
  },
  {
   "from": "pintados",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The painted ones",
   "as": "The tradition."
  }
 ]
}