Settlement behavior in the Kanto Plain during the Japanese Paleolithic based on lithic raw material procurement and consumption

Abstract

This study examines settlement system changes before and during the Last Glacial Maximum in central Japan. Human mobility is estimated from raw material procurement to infer how Upper Paleolithic hunter–gatherers acquired necessary materials. Seventy-four sites are investigated with the methodological assumption that the lithic raw materials were obtained through an embedded strategy.Changes in settlement patterns through time are reconstructed in the following ways. First, around 30,000 14Cyrs BP, hunter–gatherer territories formed between high-quality lithic raw material sources approximately 200 km apart, constrained by the distribution of lithic raw material sources and the area's terrain and suggesting that their subsistence activities were also conducted in those prime areas. Second, during the Last Glacial Maximum, hunter–gatherers still acquired lithic raw materials from distant sources around 200 km apart, while the area of hunting activities using spear points decreased to an 80 km radius. As territories shrank, large manufacturing sites for making spear points appeared in the vicinity of high-quality raw material sources in this period.In sum, the embedded lithic procurement system in Japan during this period was largely changed by ecological deterioration. Patterns transitioned from general resource exploitation in the early period to seasonal movement between isolated resource-rich areas during the Last Glacial Maximum, resulting in significant change from the mobile hunter–gather society at the end of the Late Pleistocene to the sedentary society of the Holocene.