ABSTRACT
Small scale mining in the Philippines is the major leading mineral industry, operating in more than 30 provinces involving 300,000 miners. Women play a very important role in traditional small scale mining. An understanding of traditional small scale miners and women traditional small scale miners is best appreciated by placing them in their historical context and by a description of their culture. In the analysis of ethnographic data of traditional small scale miners it is not always easy to isolate the role of women. Among Kankana-ey traditional small scale miners, the founding members of a community become the nucleus of a corporate descent group. The Kankana-ey refers to lode mining as agabukay and to their tunnels as abukay. A placer deposit is a loose sedimentary deposit containing valuable minerals. The archaeological site is most likely that women miners in the past processed and milled their ore in much the same way as the Kankana-ey women of today.
