EN
With combined methods of anthropological fieldwork and use of various sources (historical documents, archival photographs, and oral narratives), this exploratory paper is a comparative study of the practice of traditional tattooing between the indigenous groups in Kalinga, north Luzon Philippines, and the Atayal of Taiwan. Findings show that the two groups share the same cultural characteristics in terms of the rationale for getting tattoos, the methods, designs and others. But the difference in historical experiences between the two also determined the trajectories of tattooing practice in the contemporary context, the Kalinga with its revival and the Atayal on the decline.