Don E. Crabtree was a master craftsman and a dean of American flintknappers. Crabtree's research is important because it pioneered the development of Experimental Archaeology and the application of lithic technology to problems of cultural behavior. and cultural history. Crabtree's participation and involvement in society is apparent. Crabtree was an active person who was not happy merely enrolled in school so he dropped out of college after just one term. Even with his lack of formal education, Crabtree actively shared his knowledge of stone tools with others at the University of California in Berkeley by 1930. In 1939, he discovered he had cancer and this caused a brief lapse in his archaeological studies. Determination could be deterred, however, because he was soon employed by the Lithic Lab at the Ohio State Museum in the early 1940's. Crabtree was sent to serve his country as a shipbuilding engineer during W6rld War Ⅱ He met his wife and married in 1943. After the war, Crabtree retired to his home state of Idaho. Retirement appeared to serve Crabtree well as many accomplishments of his were obtained during this time. As a retiree Crabtree stayed active as he continued flintknapping, a method by which people work stone into tools, also called flaking or chipping. Flintknapping involves striking or punching carefully controlled flakes off of stone. Many other extraordinary jobs and awards were obtained throughout Crabtree's later life as well. Between 1964--1975 he was appointed Research Associate in Lithic Technology at Pocatello Museum. In 1966, he was awarded a National Science Foundation grant which allowed him to record on film and publish his experiment results. Crabtree will be remembered for 'Crabtree's Law', which simply states that 'the greater the degree of final finishing applied to a stone artifact, whether by flaking, grinding and/or polishing, the harder it is to conclude the lithic reduction process which produced the stone artifact.' Crabtree's Law serves as a technological rationale for use in modern scientific studies of lithic sources in correlation with techniques for tracing the distribution of material from their sources to the final location of discard. What Crabtree's Law argues is that the final finishing state in the production of many types of stone artifacts actually erases visible, precious steps in the lithic reduction process. One needs to go beyond and discover the technological processes by which the tools were produced if they want to truly analyze the stone artifact. Perhaps the most important printed contribution of Crabtree's career was An Introduction to Flintknapping. This well illustrated glossary became a standard reference for most lithic studies scholars in America and overseas. Crabtree's research and generous sharing of knowledge and expertise has advanced the science involved with stone tool analysis. Crabtree was a man who always volunteered his wealth of knowledge to anyone willing to learn. Crabtree was an archaeologist, a pioneer, and a generous man whose immense energy and curiosity pushed him to world leadership in the study of stone tool analysis. He was a modest, humble man who believed his lack of a formal college education was a reflection of his not really being a scholar. The word 'dean' in the beginning sentence of the first paragraph means______.