A Cold Habitat: Mapping Blade Assemblages Between the Siberian Altai and the Tibetan Plateau During MIS 3

作者：Peiqi Zhang, Randall Haas, Clea H. Paine, Xiaoling Zhang, Nicolas Zwyns · 发表于：Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1007/s41982-024-00175-1 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Geology and Paleoclimatology Research、Tree-ring climate responses、Climate change and permafrost

Abstract How and why early hunter–gatherers expanded into the challenging environments of the Tibetan Plateau during the Pleistocene remain largely unexplained. The discovery of the archaeological site of Nwya Devu, characterized by lithic blade production, brings new evidence of human expansion to high elevations ca. 40–30 ka. The blade assemblage currently lacks technological antecedents in East Asia. During Marine Isotope Stage 3, the surrounding lowlands to the Plateau were dominated by a distinct type of industry broadly named “core and flake.” It is suggested that the Nwya Devu blade assemblage derives from traditions in the eastern Eurasian Steppe, a clustered hub for Upper Paleolithic blade technology. In contrast to the East Asian lowlands, the Tibetan Plateau shares a number of environmental similarities with North and Central Asia such as low temperature and humidity, long winters, strong seasonality, and grassland landscapes. Blade and core-and-flake technologies tend to be associated with different environments in eastern Asia. We hypothesize that this geographic distribution indicates different sets of behavioral adaptations that map onto distinct ecozones and are relevant to human expansion to the Tibetan Plateau during Marine Isotope Stage 3. To evaluate the working model, we characterized the environmental parameters for both blade and core-and-flake technologies in eastern Asia during the period. The results show that environmental conditions on the Plateau ...