Dissertation Research: The Ethnoarchaeology of Gamo Artisans

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Under the direction of Dr. Steven Brandt, MS Kathryn Weedman will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will conduct ethnographic fieldwork among the Gamo people of southwestern Ethiopia. The Gamo are extremely unusual because the make flaked stone tools and use these in their production activities. Only in this portion of Ethiopia do present day groups retain this prehistoric practice. The Gamo are divided into ten intra-ethnic sections and MS Weedman will examine variation in tool production and utilization across them. In the early part of her study she will conduct an ethnographic survey to locate stone workers and record their background and geographical relationships. A sample of new, used and discarded tools will be collected from each worker. On this basis it will be possible to compare the geographical distance of hide workers against the similarities and differences manifest in their stone tools. Preliminary interviews will focus on kinship and other types of social relationships. In the next step of the work a selected sample of artisans will be studied in detail and the process of tool manufacture and use carefully documented. MS Weedman will attempt to construct the typologies which exist in the users' heads to discern variability in terms of style and function. Workers will be video-taped and photographed to record production and utilization in detail. The collected tools will be analyzed following techniques which archaeologists employ to study prehistoric specimens and the results will be compared to categories defined by the Gamo. For all but the last few thousand years humans have lacked the ability to work metal and have relied on tools chipped from stone to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. The oldest known examples date to over two million years ago. Because stone tools have played such a crucial role and are abundant and well preserved in the archaeological record, archaeologists have relied heavily on them in their attempts to reconstruct past cultures. They have made many assumptions about how tools were used and have developed many analytic techniques to study them. However since so few modern day peoples use such implements, detailed ethnographic studies are lacking and archaeologists do not know how robust their assumptions and methodologies are. MS Weedman's research will permit her to test these archaeological approaches against an ethnographic reality and then work to refine and develop them. The results of this work will have important methodological implications.