Hoshino

A Palaeolithic site in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, with many cultural strata providing the stone tool chronology for the Kanto region. Tools, mostly of chert, were recovered from 13+ layers and choppers, scrapers, and flakes in the lowest layers are 40-50,000 bp according to radiocarbon and fission track ages of pumice beds between the layers. Blades and bifacial points in the top layers date to between 21,000-10,000 years ago. The dates are considerably older than most of the Japanese Palaeolithic sites, lending support to the idea that the archipelago was occupied in the Middle Pleistocene.

Palaeolithic site in Tochigi City in central Honshu, Japan. During excavations in the 1960s thousands of tools, mostly of chert, were recovered from 13 layers. Choppers, scrapers, and flakes in the lowest seven layers should be older than 55,000 years, and those in the next two layers over 30,000 years old. Blades and bifacial points in the top three layers date to between 21,000 and 10,000 years ago. The dates are based on radiocarbon and fission track ages of pumice beds betwen the cultural layers. believed to result firstly from the transformation of the local Yangshao under influences originating on the east coast to produce a new culture, the Henan Longshan (see Longshan, Dahe); and secondly, from the rise of the Shang bronze-using culture, which was at least in part a local outgrowth of the Henan Longshan. More detailed and revealing stratigraphic sequences are now available at Xiawanggang and Dahe. The following radiocarbon dates have been obtained from Hougang: for the (Banpo-type) Yangshao level, c4400 bc, c4200 bc; for the Henan Longshan level, c 2350 bc.