SESSION 3 – Stone tool production and processing techniques
Lithic debitage study and organization of settlement in Neolithic Western Japan

This paper intends to explain the structure of a large-scale agricultural site that characterized the Yayoi Period, the early agrarian stage of Japan, on the basis of analyses of lithic artifacts and debitage.

Neolithic society of the western area of the Japanese archipelago suddenly transformed from the previous small-scale Jomon society to Yayoi genuine agricultural society that characterized large-scale settlement, surrounded by ditches. Here is one of the most important issues to explain the mechanism of ancient social transformation and the relationship between the beginning of the rice cultivation and it.