Rethinking the Variability of Cobble-Tool Industry in South China and Southeast Asia during Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The lithic industry of South China has been characterized as simple "cobble-tool" industry persisting from early Pleistocene to Holocene and the most representative industry of Southeast Asia was also marked by pebble-tool techno-complex termed Hoabinhian during late Pleistocene-early Holocene. The possible cultural link of the two regions was proposed by some scholars but the technological characteristics and variability within the two industries was elusive. In this paper we conducted technological analysis on a "cobble-tool" industry associated with a bone tool technology from the Luobi Cave, Hainan Island, dated to ca. 11-10 ka and compared it with a well-studied typical Hoabinhian site of Laang Spean in Cambodia. Except a minimum similarity in operational sequence (chaîne opératoire) the major difference has rejected the Luobi Cave as a potential Hoabinhian site, indicating a high originality and a new variability in the tool-kit of modern human groups during late Pleistocene-early Holocene transition in South China and Southeast Asia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24187