**Author details**

*Pleistocene Archaeology - Migration, Technology, and Adaptation*

of the development of lithic technology and tool use.

Palaeolithic times

also a barrier for hominin migration into the Wallacean islands and Sahul continent. With this understanding, the authors summarize the results of three recent excavations on the islands of Talaud, Sulawesi and Mindoro in Wallacea, and discuss the evidence and timeline of migrations of early modern humans into the Wallacea region and their island adaptation during the Pleistocene, also under consideration

The third section "Pleistocene Human Migration and Technology in East Asia" also contains two papers on cases from South China and the Ryuku Islands in Japan. Chapter 5 is entitled "A Macroscopic Perspective on Lithic Technology and Human Behavior during the Pleistocene in Zhejiang Province, southeastern China" and written by Hong Chen, Jiying Liu, Xinmin Xu, and Huiru Lian, presents us with an overview of the Pleistocene sites in Zhejiang province and discusses the possible development of lithic technology in the South China region [20]. With the use of macroscopic analysis, the authors point out that the lithic industry in Zhejiang province basically belongs to the technological tradition of southern China as a transition from pebble-tool-industries in the Early and Middle Palaeolithic to flake-tool-based industries in the Upper Palaeolithic. This was accompanied by developing raw material selection and flaking techniques as flint was used as the main lithic raw material as well as the widespread use of the bipolar flaking method during the Upper

Chapter 6 entitled "The Migration, Culture, and Lifestyle of the Palaeolithic Ryukyu Islanders" and written by Masaki Fujita, Shinji Yamasaki and Ryohei Sawamura reports on the recent excavation of Palaeolithic deposits at Sakitari Cave, Okinawa Island [21]. The site provided a variety of shell artifacts including beads, scrapers, and fishhooks as well as the remains of aquatic animals, especially freshwater crabs. The initial appearance of humans on many of the remote islands in the Ryukyu Group can be traced back to at least 35,000 to 30,000 years ago, and their new findings at Sakitari Cave site clearly demonstrate that these early modern human are hunting-fishing-gathering people with considerably high seafaring and nautical skill to cross sea gaps of over 100-200 km to reach these islands. The currently oldest shell-made fishhooks in the world are dated to 23,000 years ago, thus supporting such interpretation. Together with the contribution in Chapter 4, it is now widely recognized that an intensive maritime and island adaptation of early modern humans (Homo sapiens) had developed in maritime Asia such as Wallacea and the Ryukyu

Islands, as well as along the islands in Oceania during the Pleistocene

early human history of South America.

The final section of this volume focuses on the cases of the American continent as the New World. With the title of Pleistocene to Holocene Human Technology and Interaction in New World, this section contains two interesting papers. Chapter 7 entitled "The technological diversity of lithic industries in Eastern South America during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition" by João Carlos Moreno de Sousa provides us with an overview on the cultural traditions and lithic industries of this vast region and discusses the diversity and development of the prehistoric technologies of these Palaeoindian cultures [22]. Archaeological research began rather late and systematic archaeological investigations were conducted only from the late 1960s onwards. While there is only sparse evidence for human presence during the Late Pleistocene of this region, a significant increase in human settlements occurred during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene transitional phase. The chapter by Moreno de Sousa is a useful work of reference for this important period in the

Chapter 8 is entitled "Socio-cultural interaction and symbolism in prehistoric South America: Quartz crystal manuports from Tierra del Fuego" by María Estela Mansur, Hernán Horacio De Angelis, Vanesa Esther Parmigiani, María Celina Alvarez Soncini, and Anna Franch Bach [23]. Their report introduces the

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Rintaro Ono1 \* and Alfred Pawlik<sup>2</sup>

1 National Museum of Ethnology, 10-1 Senri Expo Park, Suita Osaka 565-8511, Japan

2 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University, Ricardo and Dr. Rosita Leong Hall, Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108, Philippines

\*Address all correspondence to: onorintaro@gmail.com

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
