Under the direction of Dr. James Richardson, Mr. Michael Heckenberger will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will conduct approximately 18 months of fieldwork in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon. This region has been relatively little affected by European contact and Mr Heckenberger will study the settlement pattern, past and present of Kuikuru Amerindians. In the first stage of this project he will examine present practices of land use. He will analyze how villages are spatially organized and relate this pattern to social organization. He will then focus on individual family groups and where specific activities are conducted. In the second phase of the research he will use this knowledge to trace Kuikuru change over time. He will locate and map historic villages to compare past and present settlement patterns. Finally he will conduct archaeological excavations at prehistoric sites to examine a more distant past. For many years anthropologists have studied tribal peoples of the Amazon region in an attempt to understand how groups at a relatively simple level of technology and social organization adapt to tropical environments. The problem these reseachers face however is that even seemingly "untouched" groups have been indirectly exposed to Western contact for over one hundred years. Therefore it is difficult to tell the extent to which observed patterns developed truly independently of outside contact. Mr. Heckenberger's research will help to answer this question. This work is important for several reasons. It will increase our understanding of culture contact and change. It will also assist in the training of a promising young scientist.
