Late Pleistocene pottery production and exchange: Provenance studies of hunter-gatherer wares from southern Kyushu, Japan by neutron activation analysis.

ABSTRACT: Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in East Asia adopted pottery, yet the ability to reconstruct circulation, mobility, and exchange has been hampered, in part, due to problematic regional geochronology. The driving forces behind pottery adoption is unclear. The purpose of this study is to test our results of the first systematic petrographic pottery sourcing from the pre-Younger Dryas by utilizing neutron activation analysis. We examine samples from the Sankauyama I site on Tanegashima Island, southern Japan, dating to the Incipient Jomon, ca. 14,000/13,500-12,800 cal BP, with a well-defined geochronology. Our NAA results corroborate with the petrographic study suggesting that pottery was mainly produced in-situ, but some vessels were transported long distances from another island. Changing

SUBMITTER: Iizuka F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8926207 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature