The Concept of ‘Marr’ in Arnhem Land

Abstract

When Professor Thomson died in May 1970 he left several manuscripts, among them this paper on ‘Marr’. The paper appears to have been written in a first draft shortly after the Second World War on the basis of fieldwork in Arnhem Land between 1935 and 1943. A copy was sent to Radcliffe-Brown for his comments and a letter received from him in June 1948. Among other things he said of the paper, ‘It is valuable from the point of view of scientific scholarship to have some of the more significant statements in the native language. But this does make the paper difficult to read for anyone who wants only to get the general idea. I suggest that you lay the paper aside for a time and reconsider it again later on.’ The advice was taken. The paper appears to have been redrafted some time later and a copy sent to Rodney Needham who was in correspondence with Thomson on the topic of kin classification in Cape York. In June 1963 Needham wrote back urging publication. By this time, however, Thomson's interests had turned to work in the desert and he put the paper permanently aside. The paper is of interest for its detailed ethnography and as such is published for the benefit of regional specialists. Although Thomson's name is best known for his economic and ecological studies in Arnhem Land, he was deeply interested in ritual life and brought to ethnography a concern for observing behaviour that was rare in his day. In preparing the paper for publication I have mainly eliminated repetition and redundancy. The few additions I have made are indicated by square brackets. I received permission to prepare the paper for publication from Mrs Thomson while organizing the cataloguing of Thomson's ethnographic collection on a grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Work on the paper has been made possible by an appointment as Senior Associate in Aboriginal and Oceanic Ethnology in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne. I am most grateful for the help I have received from Mrs Thomson, Miss J. Wiseman, Professor G. Dening and Mr A. West.