{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "ta-moko",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "Tā moko",
  "local": "tā moko",
  "local_lang": "Māori",
  "aliases": [
   "moko kauae",
   "pūkauae"
  ],
  "said": "Carved with a chisel, leaving a groove rather than a smooth surface"
 },
 "region": [
  "oceania"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "family": "cut",
  "status": "revived"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": 1500,
  "to": 2026,
  "circa": true,
  "label": "Men's moko stopped about 1860; women's continued; revived from 1990"
 },
 "practice": {
  "method": "cut",
  "tool": "uhi",
  "ink": "awheto-ngarehu",
  "placement": [
   "face",
   "chin",
   "thighs",
   "buttocks"
  ],
  "marked": "both",
  "marks": "specialist",
  "status": "revived",
  "countries": [
   "NZ"
  ],
  "first_record": 1769,
  "break": [
   1907,
   1990
  ],
  "revived": 1990,
  "suppressed_by": "the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, and the trade in tattooed heads before it",
  "note": "An albatross-bone chisel struck with a mallet; the skin is grooved, not punctured."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "New Zealand: albatross-bone chisels struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that stays visible as texture, not only as colour.",
  "story": "*Tā moko* is not a puncture. The *uhi* — a hafted chisel of albatross bone — is struck, and the skin keeps the furrow. That is why a moko reads in raking light and why a photograph flattens it.\n\nPigment: *awheto*, a caterpillar fungus, for the body; *ngarehu*, burnt timber, for the darker face colour; soot from burnt kauri gum mixed with fat. It was kept in carved vessels called *oko* which were buried between uses and handed down.\n\nSteel needles arrived with Europeans and were faster and safer, and the groove went. Men's moko had largely stopped by the 1860s; women kept receiving *moko kauae* into the twentieth century, and Michael King interviewed more than seventy women in the early 1970s who had been marked before the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907. Since 1990 the practice has come back, machine mostly, chisel too, with women among the practitioners — and a Māori foreign minister and a prime-time news anchor wearing *moko kauae* on the country's screens."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "นิวซีแลนด์ สิ่วกระดูกนกอัลบาทรอสตอกด้วยค้อน ทิ้งร่องไว้บนผิวหนัง ไม่ใช่เพียงสี"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "uhi",
   "as": "The chisel.",
   "rel": "tool"
  },
  {
   "to": "cut",
   "as": "The method.",
   "rel": "method"
  },
  {
   "to": "tatau",
   "as": "The neighbouring Pacific tradition that taps instead of cutting.",
   "rel": "tradition"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Tā moko",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%81_moko"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-t-moko",
  "s:wp-m-ori-people"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-t-moko"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "tags": [
  "revival",
  "women",
  "start-here"
 ],
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-thigh-moko.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Thigh moko.jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Thigh_moko.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThigh_moko.jpg",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain",
   "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author",
   "credit": "Moko; or, Maori Tattooing by Horatio Gordon Robley, 1896",
   "alt": "Image depicting a Māori tattoo or moko on someone’s thigh and buttock",
   "date": "1896-01-01",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "bcbe57cdcb7ef524d122d8de25a88c48db3b8754f91588b04676f2d5168be81d"
  },
  {
   "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work-gottfried-lindauer.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Tohunga-ta-moko at Work – Gottfried Lindauer.jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Tohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain",
   "author": "Gottfried Lindauer",
   "credit": "https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/323/the-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work",
   "alt": "The Tohunga-ta-moko at Work. Painting by Gottfried Lindauer of Māori tattoo (moko) being carved into a man’s face by a skilled tattooist (tohunga-tā-moko).",
   "date": "Unknown date",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "f677deb89a4db4b11dd9585f5ee54024649249bda10347be26ce65b58ae368a1"
  }
 ],
 "geo": {
  "lat": -38.5,
  "lon": 176.0,
  "precision": "region",
  "source": "s:commons"
 },
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "cut",
   "type": "method",
   "name": "Cut",
   "as": "The tradition built on it."
  },
  {
   "from": "uhi",
   "type": "tool",
   "name": "Uhi",
   "as": "What it makes."
  },
  {
   "from": "awheto-ngarehu",
   "type": "ink",
   "name": "Awheto and ngarehu",
   "as": "Where it goes."
  },
  {
   "from": "moko-kauae",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "Moko kauae",
   "as": "The tradition it belongs to."
  },
  {
   "from": "tohunga-act",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The Tohunga Suppression Act",
   "as": "What it caught."
  }
 ]
}