As I write this, I look to the shelf in front of me which is filled with dolls, all looking back at me. Each, in my mind, has a different and valuable personality. Ramona likes me to read everything I write out loud to check for rhythm and grammar. Tuppence insists that I check the science very thoroughly while Tamika is constantly telling me to lighten up. Others are keen on art or music, speak French or help me learn Chinese. Each doll has a role in my world, as do the bears, pandas and dragons who join them on the shelves.
To the right is an image of the Bears who help with French vocabulary. Petit Prof is male, while Fleur is female. Associating nouns with them ensures that I get the gender correct.
About 40,000 years ago, the first figurines appeared. Were they ‘dolls’? And why do all human cultures make such objects?
Other species have wood, stone and clay available to them, but they don’t make little birds or tiny chimpanzees. Birds and primates will make tools by stripping leaves from a twig to dig into hollows for insects or honey. Chimpanzees and monkeys will use stones to crush nuts. But only humans will make make tools which bear no resemblance to the original material. We can visualise the object of desire within the lump of stone or wood. The stone becomes a finely shaped arrow head. The wood becomes a little human.
Why have humans made representations of themselves, other animals and imagined creatures for tens of thousands of years? The first glimpse I had into the reason relates to the figures on the shelf behind me. They look like dolls, but are so much more than that. They are contemporary Native American kachina (also spelt katsina).
The kachina are Pueblo mythological beings who populate the stories and are performed in ceremonies. They have been represented in rock art and on objects dating back millennia. Kokopelli the flute player, is one of the best known. He is shown on the left of this rock art from New Mexico.
Petroglyph of the flute player, Kokopelli, Mortendad Cave near Los Alamos, NM, USA. Photo: Larry Lamsa under Creative Commons licence.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petroglyphs,_Mortendad_Cave.jpg
My collection of kachina are from Navajo artist Jacita L. Although best known from the Hopi tribe of the Pueblo peoples, kachina are part of the cultural tradition of many Pueblo tribes as well as the Navajo.
Kachina are masked mythological characters that impart information through their fantastic traditional dances in Pueblo ceremonies. So important are these characters to the knowledge system that they are also found in a multitude of art forms, most famously in figurines such as the traditional kachina shown to below.
Plate 2 White Ogre Tihu (Katsina Figure), Hopi, Native American, ca. 1900, 17.8 cm high. In the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Possibly made for the tourist market. Public Domain.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 17.8 cm. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/717591
To Western eyes, these are dolls. They are given to children, but they are not playthings. Hundreds of distinct kachina form the foundation to the knowledge system. Created to specific designs, the characters provide a structure for stories that become increasingly complex over a lifetime.
In one school I worked with, the young students in Years 3 and 4, learnt that it wasn’t about putting their toys away because it was time to work. It was time to get them out. We called these characters Rapscallions.
One experiment involved taking their argumentative essays. Someone else’s Rapscallion was placed in front of them, and they were told that this Rap disagreed with them entirely. They were to convince it. The improvement in their arguments was astounding. The Raps acted out multiplication tables among many other themes. The multiplication, Rapscali Tables, method is described on this page, and has a fully illustrated booklet to download free.