Across The Seas In Prehistoric Northeast Asia

Across the Seas in Prehistoric Northeast Asia

This book provides the current knowledge on prehistoric human contacts and migrations in Northeast Asia (consisting of far eastern Russia, Northeastern Siberia, Korea, Northeast China, and Japan), using obsidian as a commodity. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the patterns of prehistoric exchange and human movements in the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic of Northeast Asia. The proposed book is the first comprehensive summary of obsidian provenance and issues related to prehistoric human contacts/migrations and early seafaring in Northeast Asia. The particular importance of this book is that obsidian is used as a commodity to establish the movements of ancient people that is almost impossible to do using traditional archaeological approaches. The book contains updated information on the vast region with a multitude of obsidian sources and artefacts, based on the author’s first-hand knowledge generated in the last 30+ years. It makes this book a unique source of information derived from Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese publications (as well as English summaries) for comparison between different parts of Northeast Asia.

Maritime Prehistory of Northeast Asia

The Peoples of Northeast Asia through Time

The focus of Richard Zgusta’s The Peoples of Northeast Asia through Time is the formation of indigenous and cultural groups of coastal northeast Asia, including the Ainu, the “Paleoasiatic” peoples, and the Asiatic Eskimo. Most chapters begin with a summary of each culture at the beginning of the colonial era, which is followed by an interdisciplinary reconstruction of prehistoric cultures that have direct ancestor-descendant relationships with the modern ones. An additional chapter presents a comparative discussion of the ethnographic data, including subsistence patterns, material culture, social organization, and religious beliefs, from a diachronic viewpoint. Each chapter includes maps and extensive references.