Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Paleogenetic evidence indicates that ancient North American populations emerged from a mix of East Eurasian and Ancient North Eurasian groups around 25,000 years ago, followed by a period of isolation and subsequent migration to the Americas after approximately 21,000 years ago. However, the precise locations and mechanisms of these formative events remain unclear due to limited data. Similarities in cultural patterns between Asia and North America, alongside emerging genetic data, highlight the Pacific Rim as a critical region for understanding the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas. This session presents cutting-edge research on Late Pleistocene archaeology, paleogenetics, and paleoenvironmental studies to explore new insights into shared ancient human history along the northern Pacific Rim.

Other Keywords
North America • ancient DNA • Archaeometry & Materials Analysis • Asia: East Asia

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • The American Upper Paleolithic and Its Origins (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren Davis.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A number of North American sites predating ~14.5 ka, well before an ice-free corridor became available, have relatively large stone tool assemblages that allow some assessment of the underlying characteristics of the lithic tradition they share. These assemblages have a broad technological...

  • Appearance of the bifacial stemmed points in Paleo-Sakhalin Hokkaido Kurile Peninsula (PSHK) (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Masami Izuho.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The precise locations and mechanisms of the emergence of ancient North American populations, which developed from a mix of East Eurasian and Ancient North Eurasian groups around 25,000 years ago, followed by a period of isolation and subsequent migration to the Americas after approximately...

  • Archaeological Implications of Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene Paleoceanographic Change in the Cedros Island Region, Mexico (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Stone.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> The Late Pleistocene to early Holocene (~20,000-7000 cal BP) was marked by warming climates, rapidly rising sea levels, shifting oceanic conditions, and profound paleolandscape changes along North America’s Pacific coast. Dramatic transformations in the coastal environments of Baja...

  • Cultural Evolution in the Paleo-SHK and Pacific Rim: A New Approach to Human Dispersal in Northeast Asia and Eastern Beringia (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Gala.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Determining the origin of the first people in North America has been an area of contention. One possible hypothesis proposes an origin on the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kurile (PSHK) peninsula, stating that the numerous microblade cores and stemmed projectile points on the peninsula are similar to...

  • Investigating Genetic Heritage and Adaptive Responses in Prehistoric Populations from the Eastern Edge of Eurasia through Ancient DNA Analysis (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yusuke Watanabe.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent genetic studies on the movements of early human populations, including ancient DNA research, have suggested ancestral migrations from Southeast Asia to East Eurasia and the Americas. However, certain adaptive responses during the eastward migration into Eurasia remain unclear. By examining...

  • The Island of Fogs at the end of the Age of Ice: Clear Evidence for fully developed Maritime Adaptations by the end of the Pleistocene in Baja California (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Des Lauriers.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing people in particular spots in time and space gives only part of the evidence that we need to understand human history. With such limited information, we are adrift as to where populations may have come from and what decisions they were making in a world structured by human knowledge and...

  • The North Pacific Coastal Migration Hypothesis: New Insights from the Northwest Coast (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only E. James Dixon.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A transitory island archipelago along the southern coast of Beringia existed ca. 30,000-8,000 BP and may have facilitated human dispersals to the Americas from NE Asia. However, opportunities for human dispersals southward from the Gulf of Alaska along the Northwest Coast (NWC) of North America...

  • Old enough?: Determining the beginning age of bifacial point technology in central Japan (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kazuki Morisaki.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The bifacial stemmed point (BSP) in Japan is considered to be synchronous with or older than the relevant examples across the northern Pacific Rim, which includes the Japanese archipelago in the west and western North America in the east. Therefore, bifacial point technology in Japan has recently...

  • Paleoenvironments, First pottery, and the Late Upper Paleolithic from Hokkaido Island, Japan (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumie Iizuka.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While Late Pleistocene lithic technology patterns around ~16,000 cal BP show similarities between Northeast Asia and North America, early regional ceramic technology does not appear as early in North America. To reconstruct the technology and investigate the discrepancy in the timing of...

  • Stone tool cache on the landscape: a study of the Tomamu-Daichi cache in Hokkaido, Japan (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuichi Nakazawa.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A stone-tool cache isolated on a given landscape raises the question as to why hunter-gatherers cached stone tools in a specific location on the given landscape and the extent to which they were transported between a manufactured place (e.g., lithic raw material outcrop) and a location of cache....

  • Submerged Cultural Landscapes of the Eastern Pacific Rim: New Discoveries and the Path Forward (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Gusick.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last 100,000 years of our human history has seen significant human dispersals around the globe. These dispersals coincided with increased global ice volumes and lowered sea levels that exposed millions of squares kilometers of lands previously under water. While the amount of subaerial lands...

  • Submerged Paleolandscapes Offshore Alaska: Modelling Site Potential and Archaeological Preservation (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Evans.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The story of the peopling of the New World is firmly centered on the waters surrounding present-day Alaska, and specifically the land bridge that connected North America and Asia during periods of lower sea-level. Despite the importance of this submerged landscape, totaling over 1.3 billion...

  • Tracing Late Pleistocene Human Movements In and Across NE Asia and North America Through Stone Tool Technological Markers (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karisa Terry.

    This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Late Pleistocene Archaeology of the Northern Pacific Rim" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Recent studies coupling archaeological materials and human genetic markers indicate the earliest North American occupations derived from NE Asia during the late Pleistocene, roughly 21,00-14,000 BP. Details of the process of human movements within and between these continents are unclear....