traditionSicanje
sicanje · Croatian
sicanje — pricking; crosses and circles on the forearms and chest
Mostarac · Public domain| Where it goes | arms, hands, chest |
|---|---|
| Notes | Catholic Croats in central Bosnia; the marks went on girls, and sometimes boys, around puberty. |
| Ink | Soot and honey |
| Years between | 1945–2026 (81) |
about 1,500 – 1,945 · Died out after the Second World War; the designs are being used again by machine
44.0000, 17.7000 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
Bosnia: Catholic girls' forearms and hands marked with crosses, circles and fences, pricked with soot and honey.
The long version
Two nineteenth-century observers recorded it — the archaeologist Ćiro Truhelka, who drew the designs, and a doctor, Leopold Glück, who published a paper in Vienna in 1894 titled The Tattooing of Skin Among the Catholics of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The custom went out after the Second World War. What survives is the design vocabulary, now being applied by machine by tattooists in Croatia and Bosnia — a revival of the pattern without the practice, which is a distinct thing and this site counts it separately.
Connected to
- The pilgrim's cross The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site.
- Who wrote it down Recorded by a doctor and an archaeologist, which is the usual pair.
Named here by
- The pilgrim's cross Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean.
- Soot and honey Where it goes.
- Truhelka and Glück What they recorded.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Sicanje — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Sicanje — Wikipedia (en)
- Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there