Modern hominids in the Japanese Islands and the early use of obsidian.

My talk focuses on the early use of obsidian in the Japanese Islands. More than one hundred geologic obsidian sources are recognized in the Japanese Islands, and the emergence of obsidian exploitation in the early Upper Palaeolithic strongly connected to the characteristic features of the modern human dispersal in East Asia. Traces of the Upper Palaeolithic people are available over the Islands, from north Hokkaido to the south Okinawa. Generally, lithic assemblages are well preserved in the loess like aeolian roam deposits, and they continue from uppermost Palaeolithic Layer down to the bottom Layer X, which indicates the beginning of the Upper Plalaeolithic, in south Kanto area, central Japan. Early Upper Paaleolithic is characterized by the appearance of Edge-ground stone tools (Adzes /or Axes), Trapezoids, flakes with secondary retouched bases, and the emergence of obsidian exploitation. The earliest evidence of obsidian procurement activities in the Japanese Island was recognized from Idemaruyama site Cultural Layer I, Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan dated 38,000 cal BP. Onbae Islet, a famous geologic source of obsidian in Kozu Isle, is located on a chain of Izu Islands in the Pacific ocean, ca.170km south west from central part of Tokyo, and Onbase Islet was not connected with Japanese main Islands even in the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). No land-bridge was also formed between Korean Peninsula and Japanese Kyushu Island. Geologic source provenance analysis was done by EDXRF (energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis) on obsidian from Idemaruyama site, and was identified as obsidian from Onbase Islet. This is an explicit evidence that the modern hominids dispersed in East Asia, and they made obsidian procurement activities between Idemaruyama site and Onbase Islet for their lithic tool productions as early as ca. 38,000 cal BP. Early use of obsidian expressed on the Onbase Islet, therefore, evaluated as behavioral modernity of modern hominids adapted in the early Upper Palaeolithic in the Japanese Islands.