QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
Understanding the technological transition during the Late Pleistocene in Korea
Abstract: New technology leads new eras of human culture. One of the well-known examples in early human history showing a technological change and its impact on human subsistence is the transition of lithic manufacturing technology during the Late Pleistocene. The transition relates to key issues of human evolution, such as modern human dispersals, the emergence of blade industries and morphologically standardized tools made of stone, bone, antler, and ivory. However, the technological transition of around 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, in East Asia still has many open questions due to the limited number of stone artifact studies and even fewer records of human remains and other material evidence. The proposed research will focus on the transitional period in the Korean Peninsula using models that are built with Cultural Evolutionary theory. The main question is: what are the ecological and social contexts that led to the appearance of new stone artifact technologies in the Late Pleistocene in Korea? I will analyze lithic data from Korea to evaluate models to explain the appearance of new technologies: models of social context (drawing on cultural transmission concepts) and models of ecological context (drawing on behavioral ecology concepts).