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The eastern Asian ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ revisited: a view from Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Chuntaek Seong  and
Christopher J. Bae
Chuntaek Seong
Affiliation:
Department of History, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea
Christopher J. Bae*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way, 346 Saunders Hall, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: cjbae@hawaii.edu)
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Abstract

Is the Middle Palaeolithic an appropriate concept in eastern Asia? The issue has been debated for China in two recent papers in Antiquity (Yee 2012; Li 2014), which in turn responded to an earlier argument set out by Gao and Norton (2002). But does the Korean record offer a different perspective? Here, the authors argue that Korean archaeology, as with the Chinese record, provides no support for a distinct Middle Palaeolithic. Rather than seeking to validate an inappropriate chronological framework derived from European Palaeolithic research, emphasis should instead be placed on developing a regionally specific model of prehistory for eastern Asia. They conclude, akin to Gao and Norton (2002), that the East Asian Palaeolithic should be divided into two major cultural periods: Early and Late.

Keywords

eastern AsiaKoreaMiddle Palaeolithicgeochronologytypology
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 90 , Issue 353 , October 2016 , pp. 1151 - 1165
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016 

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