ABSTRACT
There is in the case of cicatrization (and of tooth filing) a rough association, in the minds and actions of the Tiv, with age, tribal identity, and personal attractiveness. The association with age is most clearly seen by the correlation of different styles of scarification with generations. The older generation (people of 45 and over) are marked about the eyes with the round polka dot scars (raised by rubbing in charcoal) known as abaji. This correlation with the older generation is so widely known that men who, for personal reasons, wish to appear older than they are sometimes have the abaji scars placed upon them. The nail scars (akusa)—single marks cut in by a nail, to a depth generally greater in northern than in southern Tivland-used to be associated with youth and were a fashionable rage which Akiga describes vividly;1 such marks, though still popular, are now found on the younger middle-aged. The latest fashion is a sort of razor tattooing, the individual cuts of which are very fine, but which are combined in complicated animal or geometrical patterns; these are also known as akusa (to indicate the type of cutting) but are more often referred to by the name of the pattern (e.g., ive, water monitor; ndial, mud-fish) or by the place on which they are cut (arm, neck, parts of the face, stomach, calf, etc.). Such tattooed patterns are frequently combined with the ordinary nail scars.
