Overview

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.  

Full Product Details

9789819751372

Table of Contents

Reviews

“This book stands on the phenomenological synthesis between sources and sites. The author has thoroughly researched and cited relevant articles, books and reports on obsidian provenance analysis and archaeological results in Northeast Asia, providing a comprehensive overview of the diverse body of research for readers interested in gaining a fuller picture of the region. This book is the first key publication to present the results of obsidian research in Northeast Asia to wider global research communities and interested readers.” (Akira Ono, Antiquity, Vol. 99 (405), 2025)

Author Information

Yaroslav V. Kuzmin is Russian Geoarchaeologist and Professor from the Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Kuzmin’s research interests are paleogeography, obsidian provenance, and paleodiet. He has published widely in both Russian and English over the past decades in the Stone Age cultural complexes in Northeast Asia.

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