Scraping a goat hide for a skirt

Producing stone scrapers from chalcedony

PROJECT SUMMARY

The Konso are an eastern Cushitic speaking people, who live in the highlands of southern Ethiopia. They are intensive agriculturists who subsist primarily on millet and maize, which is grown primarily on an extensive system of stone terraces. They live in nucleated villages with approximately 1500 persons per village.

The Konso are one of the last remaining people, who continue to produce, use, and discard stone tools for their own use on a regular basis. In addition, to the documentation of the Konso stone-tool practices, we have an opportunity to test the hypotheses associated with the source for lithic technological variation. In particular, it is imperative that we study the Konso because they are the only remaining stone tool-using culture, where women predominantly make and use stone-tools.

In 2001, we were award (Kathryn Weedman and Steven Brandt) a two-year National Science Foundation grant to study the Konso hideworkers. The significance of flaked stone-tool variation has been a source of great archaeological interest for over 100 years, and as a result there are multiple explanations (style, function, behavioral ecology, social agency, etc.) for this diversity based on inferential methods, ethnohistoric documents, and experimental archaeology. Archaeologists concerned with broadening our understanding of stone tools in the ancient past, however, have found studies of modern populations producing and using stone tools invaluable. Our goal is to take a multidirectional approach to lithic studies using ethnography, cinematography, ethnoarchaeology, and archaeology to examine potential sources of variation through the stone-tool life cycle.

PROJECT  PUBLICATIONS

2006                Tara Belkin, Steven Brandt and Kathryn Weedman.  Woman the Tool Maker. (27 minutes). Archaeological Methods and Practice: An Educational Film Series. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek California.

2006                 James Ellison. "Everyone can do as he wants": Economic Liberalization and emergent forms of antipathy in southern Ethiopia.  American Ethnologist 33 (4):665-686.

2005                Kathryn Weedman. Gender and Stone Tools: An Ethnographic Study of the Konso and Gmao Hideworkers of Southern Ethiopia. In Gender and Hide Production, edited by Lisa Frink and Kathryn Weedman, pp. 175-196, AltaMira Press:Walnut Creek.

2003               V. Rots and B.S. Williamson. Microwear and residue analysis in perspective the contribution of ethnoarchaeological evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science 31(2004) 1287-1299.

2002                Steven Brandt and Kathryn Weedman. The Ethnoarchaeology of Hide Working and Stone Tool Use in Konso, Southern Ethiopia: An Introduction. In Le Travail Du Cuir de La Prehistoire, edited by S. Beyries and F. Audoin-Rouzeau, pp. 113-130, Editions APDCA: Antibes, France.

2002                Steven Brandt and Kathryn Weedman.  Woman the Toolmaker. Archaeology September/October 2002.

Foreign Researchers

Dr. Kathryn Weedman, University of South Florida, Florida St. Petersburg; PI, Anthropology Program, email: kjw@stpt.usf.edu

Dr. Steven A. Brandt, University of Florida; CO-PI; email sbrandt@anthro.ufl.edu

Dr. James G. Ellison, California State University, Long Beach; Ethnographer

Dr. John Arthur, University of Florida; Excavation Crew Chief

Justin Shipley, Los Angeles, California; Cinematographer

Tara Belkin, Los Angeles, California; Cinematographer

Harriet Clift, Cape Town, South Africa (MA complete); Laboratory Chief

Erich Fischer, University of Texas San Marcos; Lithic Analyst

Kara Bridgman, University of Florida (MA student); student researcher

Rebecca Klein, University of Florida (PhD student); student researcher

Veerle Rots, University of Leuven; microwear specialists

Bonnie Williamson, University of Witwatersrand, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, South Africa