Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene Plant Movements in Southern Kyushu, Japan

Shibutani Ayako

Archaeologies : journal of the World Archaeological Congress

From the late Pleistocene to early Holocene in Japan, subtropical and temperate forest elements moved northwards. This affected human choices and access to food sources. More settled patterns of living spread northwards gradually, and northern hunting-gathering-fishing people began cultivating vegetables and cereal crops. This poster reports the presence of ancient starch residues on stone artefacts in Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Kyushu. The oldest residues recovered are dated by context to about 30,000 14^CyrBP. If such residues can be identified, it may be possible to detect a hypothesized early phase of tropical plant movement northwards during warmer climate peaks in the late terminal Pleistocene, as well as during the long period of Holocene warming that followed. As an initial step towards identification, the morphological characteristics and condition of the starch granules are described and compared to those of other sites in early Japan.

Grinding stones

Plant utilization

Starch residues

Japan

Southern Kyushu

General history of Japan [ 210 ]

eng

Springer

(c) 2009 The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

[ISSN] 1555-8622

[NCID] AA12171979

[DOI] 10.1007/s11759-009-9094-z

[DOI] http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11759-009-9094-z