Adornment

Stephen Davies traces how people have decorated their bodies, belongings and surroundings, examining the range, reach and purpose of these practices. The book moves from the earliest human societies through ancient civilizations and hunter-gatherer groups to modern industrial life, following the history of hairstyles, skin treatments and cosmetics across many cultures.

Along the way it covers a wide set of examples: the fading popularity of hats, the meanings carried by jewelry, the spread of tattooing, the rich burial goods of the Upper Paleolithic, and the painted bodies of the Nuba. Davies asks what these adornments communicate to the people who see them, and he draws on aesthetics, evolutionary history, archaeology, ethology, anthropology, psychology, cultural history and gender studies to answer.

He also places the indigenous cultures of Africa, Australia, and North and South America side by side, using adornment as the thread that connects them. His central argument is that decorating oneself is among the few social behaviors nearly every human society shares, and that it is more common and widespread than the activities usually considered defining features of humanity, such as religion, morality and art.