Middle and Upper Paleolithic Sites in the Eastern Hemisphere - A Database (PaleoAsiaDB)

This book provides an overview of the archaeological sites and cultural assemblages in the world and presents an archaeological database that has been established through two large-scale research projects conducted between 2010 and 2022. The projects were Replacement of the Neanderthals by Modern Humans (2010-2015) and The Cultural History of PaleoAsia (2016-2022), both of which were carried out with the aid of the Japanese Government. They deal with multi-disciplinary studies of the demise of more archaic hominins and the survival of anatomically modern humans. Although the database is designated PaleoAsiaDB, which may imply a focus on Asia, it incorporates the dataset collected from Africa and Europe by the Replacement of the Neanderthals by Modern Humans project. PaleoAsiaDB provides a list of more than 3,300 sites and 7,600 cultural assemblages of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic (Middle and Late Stone Age) of the Eastern Hemisphere as of 2020. This database is the first attempt of its kind to document the related sites of 200-20ka. The full version of the database is available at the University Museum on the University of Tokyo homepage.

Yoshihiro Nishiaki, who received his Ph.D. from University College London, is a professor of prehistory at the University of Tokyo and director of its University Museum. His research involves the archaeology of West and Central Asia mainly through technological analyses of flaked stone artifacts. He has directed numerous field investigations in these areas, including Paleolithic and Neolithic excavations in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. The PaleoAsia, which resulted in the construction of a database called PaleoAsiaDB, is one of his recent large-scale projects supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. He has served on the editorial board or scientific committee of a number of international associations, such as the International Union for Quaternary Research and Association Paléorient.

 

Yasuhisa Kondo is an associate professor and head of the Institutional Research Unit at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan. He received a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Tokyo in 2010. Since then, he has managed the PaleoAsia DB for the Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans (RNMH) and PaleoAsia projects. He has conducted archaeological fieldworks in the Sultanate of Oman for more than 15 years. He is also interested in the science of team science (SciTS). He serves as a member of the Science Council of Japan and the Young Academy of Japan and is also a visiting researcher of the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), Japan.