Under the direction of Dr. Lewis Binford, Mr. Russell Greaves will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will study the Pume, a group of horticulturalists and hunter gatherers who live in southwestern Venezuela. His research will focus on how the Pume make and use tools for subsistence activities. To do this, he will follow the process from the collection of raw materials through manufacture and subsequent use and discard. In particular, he is interested in the time tradeoffs involved between tool manufacture and other activities such as subsistence. He will collect data in a number of ways. Randomized time allocation studies will be conducted. He will also follow individuals and groups on subsistence trips and record the time spent in different activities. He will also note what tools are taken, how they are used and how patterns may change based on the goal of the expedition, the number of participants and the distance traveled. Although this study is ethnographic, the significance is primarily archaeological. Because they are virtually indestructible, stone tools are found in most paleolithic sites - often they are the only material recovered - and archaeologists of necessity focus strongly on their interpretation. On the basis of these often difficult-to-understand remains, prehistorians attempt to reconstruct diverse cultural attributes such as group size and movement patterns and they have developed many theories about how tools and behavior are related. The problem is that very little empirical data support many of these observations and Mr. Greaves research is designed to address this problem. This project is important for several reasons. It will help to provide analytic methods of general archaeological use. It will shed new light on a traditional South American group and will assist in the training of a promising young scientist.
