One continuous loop: making and meaning in the string figures of Yirrkala

Abstract

At some point in their history most cultures probably made string figures (otherwise known as cat’s cradles): patterns or designs constructed on the hands with a single continuous loop of string. First noted by European travellers in Australia and New Zealand, in the later nineteenth century anthropologists began to collect string figure repertoire from various indigenous peoples around the world. In the Australian Museum in Sydney there are 192 string figures mounted on card collected in Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land by Frederick D. McCarthy in 1948: the largest museum collection of its kind (i.e. of mounted string figures collected from one place at one time), and one of the last such collections made. It is accompanied by photographic documentation of Ngarrawu Mununggur—McCarthy’s principal collaborator—making the figures, and a record of the instructions for making them. As objects—both strange and beautiful—the mounted figures declare their status as hybrid artefacts of cross-cultural encounter and exchange. The result of a collaboration between McCarthy and his Yolngu informants, they would not exist without the contribution of both parties—the ‘science’ of Western anthropology on the one hand and Indigenous culture on the other. ‘Why’ was this collection made? and ‘What’ is it a collection of? are the central questions addressed by this study. What could be its significance now and into the future, for the Yirrkala community and a wider Australian public? To answer these questions I investigate the dual strands of the collection’s lineage—the place of string figures in the history of anthropology and their place in Yolngu culture, past and present. The particulars of this story provide new insight into the foundations of anthropology as a discipline. They also provide new understandings of Yolngu cosmology and aesthetics. Combining an analysis of the historical record with findings from my contemporary fieldwork, I explore the relationship between making and meaning in the repertoire, and describe and document Yirrkala string figure style. Of primary importance in this research was the reconnection of the museum collection with its source community in Yirrkala. This project demonstrates the potential activated through this process. The regeneration of the practice of string figure making in the Yirrkala community through reconnection with the collection, as mediated by the research process, has in a reciprocal dialogic fashion, generated new layers of significance for the collection.