The Lives of Stone Tools: Crafting the Status, Skill, and Identity of Flintknappers

329 Pages·2018·6.138 MB·English

by  Kathryn Weedman Arthur

THE LIVES OF STONE TOOLS

KATHRYN WEEDMAN ARTHUR
THE LIVES
OF STONE TOOLS
•
Crafting the Status, Skill, and Identity of Flintknappers
The University of Arizona Press
www .uapress .arizona .edu
© 2018 by The Arizona Board of Regents
All rights reserved. Published 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3713-6 (cloth)
Cover design by Leigh McDonald
Cover photo by Kathryn Weedman Arthur
Unless otherwise noted, all photos are by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Arthur, Kathryn Weedman.
Title: The lives of stone tools : crafting the status, skill, and identity of flintknappers / Kathryn Weedman
Arthur.
Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035690 | ISBN 9780816537136 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Flintknapping— Social aspects— Ethiopia. | Tools— Social aspects— Ethiopia. | Gamo
(African people)
Classification: LCC TT293 .A78 2017 | DDC 745.58/4— dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov/
2017035690
Printed in the United States of America
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 3
1 A History of Knapping Leatherworkers in the Gamo Highlands 26
2 A Boreda Ontology of Technology 63
3 Yella: The Birth of Knappable Stone in a Caste Society 93
4 Katsara and Bullacha: Learning to Circumcise and
Engage Stone Tools 128
5 Dume and Sofe: Rest and Death in Leatherworkers’ Households 178
6 The Lives of Stone Tools 219
Notes 237
References 261
Index 303

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
HE STORY OF my interest in African people and indebtedness to my many
mentors in life begins with a poet, my parents, and a priest. At the end of many
school days, Afrocentric poet Tom Elias Weatherly guided me through global issues
while riding bicycles through Buffalo, New York. It was the mid-1 970s, a period when
boxed food covered the tables of most working-class families, who watched television
variety shows that tried to bring humor into an era filled with tensions over civil rights,
women’s rights, and the Vietnam War. As the oldest daughter of graduate students,
who were studying African American literature and urban anthropology, conversa-
tions about lived experiences with conflict permeated my household. By the age of
twelve the confluence of school, parents, and an Afrocentric poet culminated in my
future path to Africa. At a Catholic private school on scholarship (we were neither
wealthy nor Catholic), it was a priest who introduced me to the rich heritage and
accomplishments exposed in Egyptian archaeology. But it was Tom Weatherly who
in a quiet way corrected my education and relocated Egypt in Africa for me. He gen-
tly teased me for my insular knowledge and articulated quite clearly the present-day
and historic experiences of many African Americans. Tom revealed to me the racism
that was all around me fostered by a history of exploitation and violence hinged on
disinformation and misrepresentation of African culture and peoples. It was from this
point on that my life took on an agenda to meet African peoples to know them as they
are, rather than through the predominate American lens.
Next, I would attend university, where many well-known scholars broadened and
challenged me and to whom I express deep gratitude. At the University of Texas at
Austin, early mentors Joseph Carter, Jeremiah Epstein, John E. Lamphear, David
VIII • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Brown, and Jon Morter encouraged me and kept me on the path to graduate school.
I continued at UT Austin as a graduate student of James Denbow, who brought me
to the Kalahari and introduced me to Ed Wilmsen. Together they revealed to me that
archaeology could be so much more than just digging! Every day in Africa with them
was a lesson about how present-day politics, land use, and culture are entwined with
history making. Thomas Hester was a patient teacher, who guided me through the
history and methods of lithic technology and encouraged reflection on the relation-
ship between material culture and identity. After a master’s thesis that analyzed lithic
technology at archaeological sites in the Kalahari from the Later Stone Age (LSA) to
historic periods, I was interested in pursuing a career in ethnoarchaeology. A phone
call from Steve Brandt at the University of Florida (UF) offering to introduce me to
people who made and used stone tools in southern Ethiopia led to the next phase in
my graduate studies. I will always be grateful to Brandt, who served as my advisor and
whose ethnoarchaeological survey in 1995 provided me with the amazing opportunity
to travel throughout southern Ethiopia to meet stone-tool-using leatherworkers. I am
also thankful for Melanie Brandt who provided wonderful illustrations and maps for
my research, some of which are reproduced in this book. Seminars, debates, and dis-
cussions led by Kathleen Deagan, Steven Feierman, Abe Goldman, Michael Moseley,
Sue Rosser, Kenneth Sassaman, and Anita Spring, as well as my UF cohorts, were so
engaging and fulfilling that they nearly derailed me into other historical/anthropolog-
ical pursuits. I also was fortunate enough to participate in Russell Bernard’s research-
methods seminar, which I am sure largely contributes to my success in writing and
earning federal research awards. Peter Schmidt is still a force in my life, encouraging
me to share my ideas more broadly and introducing me to new scholars who also like
to listen. His seminars were magical and essential in forming my ideas about proper
ethnoarchaeological practice and the importance of incorporating descendant peo-
ples’ perspectives into the writing of their history.
In the late 1990s, my husband, who had been working in the American Southwest,
decided to switch his focus to African studies; and together we have continued over
the last twenty years to cross the Atlantic, ending up in the Horn of Africa learn-
ing from the Gamo people. I am indebted to many Ethiopians for their gracious-
ness, assistance, and friendship. Yohannes Ethiopia Tocha for the last ten years has
shared his amazing linguistic and cultural knowledge concerning Omotic peoples and
has walked all the footpaths with me toward building knowledge of and collabora-
tions with Gamo communities. Berhano Wolde, Getacho Girma, and Paulos Dena
worked with me as field assistants and translators during my earlier studies. I also
thank Bizuayehu Lakew of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region
(SNNPR), who has tenaciously supported and facilitated my research since 2005
and for whose vast knowledge of southern Ethiopian peoples I appreciate. Heartfelt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • IX
thanks go toward Gezahegn Alemayehu and his family, Father John Skinnader, Father
Paddy Moran, Woro Tsentany, Sara Shanko, Tsechay Yekay, Napa Mangasah, Masay
Girma, Marcos Aseray, and Wagay Yanda, who provided companionship, ensuring
that my stay in Chencha was not just a research base but a home.
I would like to thank the program officers and reviewers at the National Science
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of South
Florida St. Petersburg, the University of South Florida System, the Leakey Founda-
tion, and Fulbright for their generous funding supporting my research since 1996.
Furthermore, I was able to successfully complete my research thanks largely to the
very professional administrative personnel at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Culture and Infor-
mation’s Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH,
formerly CRCCH), the National Museum of Ethiopia, the National Herbarium,
and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region’s Bureau of Culture and
Information in Awassa, Arba Minch, and through many local district offices.
This book is filled with the conversations I had with Gamo men and women who
openly shared their lives with me. I hope that this book brings them future pride and
prestige. Hashu Hashu!