String Figures as Mathematics : An Anthropological Approach to String Figure making in Oral Tradition Societies PART I: HOW TO STUDY STRING FIGURE MAKING Chapter 1: String Figures and Ethnography Chapter 2: A Conceptualization of String Figure Making PART II: MATHEMATICS AND STRING FIGURES Chapter 3: W.W. Rouse Ball’s Mathematical Approach to String Figures Chapter 4: Thomas Storer and the Concept of Heart Sequence PART III: ANALYSING STRING FIGURE ALGORITHMS Chapter 5: Heart Sequences and Look alike String Figures Chapter 6: Understanding Transformations PART IV: STRING FIGURES IN THE FIELD Chapter 7: Cultural and Cognitive Aspects of String Figure Making in Two Different Societies Chapter 8: Comparison of the Trobriander and Guarani Nandeva String Figure Corpora Chapter 9: Conclusion References Annexes This book addresses the mathematical rationality contained in the making of string figures. It does so by using interdisciplinary methods borrowed from anthropology mathematics history and philosophy of mathematics. The practice of string figure making has long been carried out in many societies and particularly in those of oral tradition. It consists in applying a succession of operations to a string (knotted into a loop) mostly using the fingers and sometimes the feet the wrists or the mouth. This succession of operations is intended to generate a final figure. The book explores different modes of conceptualization of the practice of string figure making and analyses various source material through these conceptual tools: it looks at research by mathematicians as well as ethnographical publications and personal fieldwork findings in the Chaco Paraguay and in the Trobriand Islands Papua New Guinea which all give evidence of the rationality that underlies this activity. It concludes that the creation of string figures may be seen as the result of intellectual processes involving the elaboration of algorithms and concepts such as operation sub procedure iteration and transformation