Change in Mobility and Site Occupation during the Late Pleistocene in Korea

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stone artifact assemblages can be an important source of information about hunter-gatherer mobility and subsistence, according to behavioral ecological theory that links technological changes to environmental adaptation. We examined stone artifacts from 28 sites in South Korea to investigate technological innovations during the Late Pleistocene and their relationship to environmental changes. We hypothesized that hunter-gatherers should move more frequently and further in order to adapt to the changed environment, so their tools became more portable and efficient, as indicated by decreases in the size of both individual tools and toolkit, and increases in function and utility. We use optimality models, especially the central place model and the patch choice model, to interpret changes in stone artifact attributes such as size, cortex ratio, retouch intensity, retouched edge ratio, and ratio of retouched pieces to discarded artifacts. We also calculate the Minimum Number of Artifacts (MNA) and Lithic Volumetric Densities (LVD) values to investigate toolkit size, diversity, and complexity for insights into patterns of mobility and site occupation. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding technological innovation as a means of risk reduction strategy for environmental change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24536