A comparison of microblade cores from East Asia and northwestern North America: Tracing prehistoric cultural relationships.

摘要

Intercontinental similarities in microblade technology have long been used as evidence in support of the hypothesis that human populations migrated from East Asia to northwestern North America during the late Pleistocene. This study synthesizes the available data in an effort to provide a preliminary overview of this technological tradition. Comparative analysis reveals that wedge-shaped cores from Chinese Upper Paleolithic assemblages, the Dyuktai Culture of eastern Siberia, Japan, and the American Paleo-Arctic Tradition of Alaska share many similarities in the selection of raw materials, core morphology, platform preparation and rejuvenation, and edge angle variation. However, it also reveals that Alaskan wedge-shaped cores are more closely related to Dyuktai Culture cores than they are to Hokkaido cores. The study concludes that the distribution of microblade complexes is best explained by migration and/or diffusion from inland Asia to North America during the late Pleistocene.