The Last Glacial Maximum Microblades from Kashiwadai 1 in Hokkaido, Japan

ABSTRACT

Although microliths are regarded as small standardized tools for complex composite technology, it is still not fully understood whether this schematic understanding developed in Old World prehistory can apply to the Late Pleistocene microblades in northeastern Asia. Here, referring to the definition of the Old World microliths, we explore the morphometric traits of the Late Pleistocene microblades in northeast Asia through an examination of the laminar blank production technology from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) microblade assemblage recovered from the Kashiwadai 1 site in Hokkaido, northern Japan. Metric and nonmetric data obtained from numerous laminar blanks reveal that microblades are comparable to bladelets without backing, as defined in the Old World records. The core reduction sequence reconstructed from the refitted specimen reveals that microblades are produced from blade core gradually reduced by careful core preparations, best labeled as the integrated laminar technology conceptually related to post-LGM bifacial microblade core technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Microblade
• microlith
• laminar technology
• Last Glacial Maximum
• LGM
• northeastern Asia

Acknowledgements

We thank anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to improve this paper. We would like to thank archaeologists of Hokkaido Cultural Operation Center for allowing us study their curated artifacts from the Kashiwadai 1, particularly for Naofumi Sakamoto and Hiroshi Fujii. Special thanks go to Drs Yan Axel Gómez Coutouly, Akara Iwase, Lawrence Straus, and Sho Yamada for sharing their works and knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Yuichi Nakazawa has a PhD in anthropology from The University of New Mexico in 2007 with a specialization in archaeology. He has conducted field and laboratory works in the prehistoric periods in East Asia (Japan and Mongolia), and Europe (Spain), working on variability in Paleolithic technocomplexes, site formation processes and obsidian hydration.

Fumito Akai has a MA in archaeology from Hokkaido University in 2005. His main research topic is microblade technologies of northern Japan.

Additional information

Funding

This research derives from a joint project, entitled “Cultural history of PaleoAsia” directed by Yoshihiro Nishiaki (The University of Tokyo) and was supported by the MEXT KAKENHI (grant numbers 16H06409 and 16H06410).