TRENDS IN ARCHAEOLOGY IN JAPAN

Paleolithic
NATSUKI Daigo1
Regarding the origin and diffusion of humanity, a movement to evaluate the behaviors
and spread of humanity beyond frameworks of history of individual countries is
active with cooperation from various ﬁeld of Quaternary study under keywords suchas geographical diversity, variability, and adaptation. In this movement, there is anincreasing importance placed on regional study of human behavior that seeks to answer
the question, “How did people in the Pleistocene adapt to various environments andformed societies and cultures?” A symposium under the theme “Variability, Similarities,
and the Deﬁnition of the Initial Upper Paleolithic across Eurasia” was held at the 8thmeeting of Asian Paleolithic Association, the second APA meeting to be held in Japan(Program and Abstracts of the 8th Meeting of the Asian Paleolithic Association). TheInitial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) belongs to the beginning of Upper Paleolithic, and it
denotes stone tools that share remains of stone tool manufacturing technology from
the Middle Paleolithic. IPU is an important research subject in order to understand thetransition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic, in other words, the diffusion of modern
humans and the emergence of modern human behaviors, and attention has been given
to its northern route. In Japan, early Upper Paleolithic stone tools are widely conﬁrmed
in paleo Honshu, however, they consist of ﬂake tools including trapezoidal stone tools
without IUP elements. Therefore, it is assumed that ﬂake tools from paleo Honshu werebrought by a southern route through the Korean Peninsula (Morisaki, K., Sano, K. &Izuho, M. 2016 Early Upper Paleolithic Blade Technology in the Japanese Archipelago,
the 8th meeting of the Asian Palaeolithic Association). This is becoming a common
understanding among many Japanese Paleolithic researchers.
The period from the end of Paleolithic to incipient Jomon continued to be a popularresearch subject this ﬁscal year, and there were many study meetings and theses
regarding it. Many were research on regional examples of human adaptation to climate
and environmental ﬂuctuation during this period. There is some research from theKanto to Tohoku regions in Honshu related to this period in Palaeolithic Research 12
published by Japanese Palaeolithic Research Association. SATO Hiroyuki, YAMADA
1 c/oTokoro Research Laboratory, The University of Tokyo, 376 Sakaeura, Tokoro, Hokkaido 093–0216, Japan(dnatsuki@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 6 (2018): 63–64© Japanese Archaeological Association

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JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 6 (2018): 63–64

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ARCHAEOLOGIASatoru, IZUHO Masami ed., Banhyoki no Jinrui Shakai (Human Society in Late Glacial)(Rokuichi Shobo) approached issues of behavioral forms and cultural formation focusing
on prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Hokkaido and the northern part of the continent.
Geophysical examination, physical and analytical, and site distribution study ofquarries were active in various places, mainly on obsidian quarries as a high-quality
stone tool material. As cooperation with geophysical researchers is necessary in stone
tool material study, it is almost established as an interdisciplinary theme in recent years.
This ﬁscal year saw research on obsidian quarries from Kyushu to Hokkaido, although
so many were naturally in Nagano Prefecture, where obsidian quarry research has been
accumulated for a long time.
Other than the above mentioned, there were many studies on various themes such as
traceological study including use-mark analysis on stone tools, experimental archaeology,
processes of site formation, stone tool manufacturing technology, chronology, diffusion
theory, the relationship between ecological change and human behavior, and Middle/
Upper Paleolithic.

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