Toponyms from 3000 years ago? Implications for the history and structure of the Yolŋu social formation in north-east Arnhem Land

Abstract

The paper focuses on a set of toponyms found on the coast of Blue Mud Bay in northern Australia, in an area today occupied by Yolŋu (Murngin) peoples. In the first part of the paper we present an analysis, based on geomorphological, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic evidence, to suggest that these toponyms have been in place for at least 3,000 years, and that they are early Yolŋu toponyms. We then argue that certain social practices and cultural mechanisms, which continue today, work to form a complex, multi-media and multi-sensory archive of names-in-place, within the frame of a robust system of intergenerational transmission. It is plausible that such a system has considerable time-depth. Yolngu oral histories suggest, indeed, that Blue Mud Bay was the origin point from which Yolngu Matha languages and Yolngu forms of kinship and governance then spread inland to the north, west and south.