The is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

with the traces of a late

Japanese Paleolithic The is the period of human inhabitation in Japan predating the development of pottery, generally before 10,000 BC. The starting dates commonly given to this period are from around 40,000 BC; although any date of human presence before 35,000 BC ...

settlement located in the former town of Kawaguchi in what is now part of the city of Nagaoka, Niigata in the

Hokuriku region The was located in the northwestern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. It lay along the Sea of Japan within the Chūbu region, which it is currently a part of. It is almost equivalent to Koshi Province and Hokurikudō area in pre-modern ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It was found to contain one of the largest number of

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s of any site thus far discovered in Japan. It was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 2004.

Overview

The Araya site is located on a river terrace near the confluence of the

Shinano River The , known as the in its upper reaches, is the longest and widest river in Japan and the third largest by basin area (behind the Tone River and Ishikari River). It is located in northeastern Honshu, rising in the Japanese Alps and flowing g ...

and the Uono River, approximately one kilometer south of Echigo-Kawaguchi Station. Four excavations have been conducted thus far, starting in 1957. Excavated materials are stored in

Meiji University , abbreviated as Meiji (明治) or Meidai (明大'')'', is a private research university located in Chiyoda City, the heart of Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1881 as Meiji Law School (明治法律学校, ''Meiji Hōritsu Gakkō'') by three Meiji-er ...

(1st survey),

Tōhoku University , or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated National ...

(2nd and 3rd surveys), the Nagaoka City Board of Education (4th survey), and at Tokyo National Museum. The site extends over an area 100 meters from east-to-west by 50 meters north-to south, and contains the ruins of several villages from approximately 17,000 years ago. The ruins overlap, indicating that a semi-nomadic population repeatedly returned to this site over many centuries. The foundations of

pit dwelling A pit-house (or ''pit house'', ''pithouse'') is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of weather conditions, these structures may also be used to store food (just like a pantry, a larder ...

s and storage pits have been found. Excavated artifacts included 6000 microlith blades, 9000 microlith cores made by the

Yubetsu technique The is a special technique to make microblades, proposed by Japanese scholar Yoshizaki in 1961, based on his finds in some Upper Palaeolithic sites in Hokkaido, Japan, which date from c. 13,000 bp. The name comes from the , on the right bank of w ...

, 1,000 lithic cores by the Horoka technique, and chisel-shaped stone tools, a large number of scrapers, and over 100,000 arrow and spear points. The base materials were mostly hard

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

, which is common in along the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it h ...

coastal areas. It was estimated that the bone, horn and leather products were also actively produced at the site, to make completed projectile points, and as such material were also needed as part of the secondary processing to produce very thin sharpened blades. During the Upper Paleolithic period, roughly until 13,000 years ago, the shapes and types of stone tools, such as

stone axe A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or che ...

s, spears, and microlith blades evolved due to rapid changes in the environment, which resulted in changes in the fauna available for hunting. Microliths, thin and razor-shape blades of stone which were used by embedding into shafts of wood or bone, appears towards the end of the Upper Paleolithic. The combination of a chisel-shaped stone tools designated the "Araya-type" and wedge-shaped microlithic blade cores has become an important index in the study of Paleolithic culture in Northeast Asia, and the style of tools found display both

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

and

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

traits, similar to what has been found widely distributed across

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

from

Lake Baikal Lake Baikal (, russian: Oзеро Байкал, Ozero Baykal ); mn, Байгал нуур, Baigal nuur) is a rift lake in Russia. It is situated in southern Siberia, between the federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Repu ...

and into

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

. The site is located about 10 minutes by car from Echigo-Kawaguchi Station on the

JR East The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are ...

Jōetsu Line.

References

External links

Nagaoka City home page

Paleolithic sites in Japan History of Niigata Prefecture Nagaoka, Niigata Historic Sites of Japan {{Asia-archaeology-stub

Overview

See also

References

External links