GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT AND CHRONOLOGY OF MIDDLE AND LATE PALAEOLITHIC CULTURE OF SOUTH KOREA

Hundreds of archaeological sites in Korea are distributed in relation to alluvial environment, the age of which ranges from the palaeo1ithic to neolithic, and even to Bronze age. Particularly palaeolithic archaeological sites are often located at proluvial, alluvial fan and fluvial environments along the river valley. This study is mainly concentrated on the representative palaeolithic sites of Korea, including Jeongok, Seokjang-ri, Soro-ri and Dangga sites in order to interpret formation process and environment, as well as the geochronology of Middle to Late Palaeolithic of S. Korea. The litho- and pedo-profiles of Middle to Late Palaeolithic sites in Korea are mainly composed of four different types : 1) weathered basement rocks, 2) saprolites and colluvium-proluvium with mass movement at the bottom, 3) subsequent alluvial or fluvial terrace sand and gravel in the middle, and 4) paleosols of different origin with frequent horizontal and vertical cracks originated from freezing and thawing of soil solum. The upper Mid to Late Palaeolithic Culture of S. Korea can be divided provisionally into four steps of stone cultures based on the geochronology, and it might be correlated with other standard archaeological and stratigraphic contexts as follows: 1)Middle to early Late Palaeolithic Culture older than 50Ka,probabaly up to ca.70Ka or older, 2) middle Late Palaeolithic Culture ranging from ca. 45Ka to 30Ka, 3) the upper Late Palaeolithic Culture ranging from ca. 22Ka to 15Ka, and 4) the End of the Late Palaeolithic Culture, typically-developed as microblade culture. Each steps have complicated and characterstic stone cultures and provide preliminary geochronological scheme of archaeological stratigraphy. Flake tool culture, originated from the pebble tool industry, was continued to the end of the Late Palaeolithic. Blade tool industry was replaced by the microblade culture. Comparing with Northeast Asia, microblade culture of Korea went through almost all of the development process of the microblade technique.