Obsidian Sourcing in the Japanese Islands

The Japanese Islands are the best-studied region of Northeast AsiaAsia in terms of obsidian provenance. Obsidian as a raw material is known in many areas throughout Japan (Fig. 6.1). It is called kokuyo-seki (Kanji writing—黒曜石; koku [黒] is “black”, and seki [石] is “stone”). Research with a focus on the sources of archaeological obsidian in Japan began in the late 1960s (e.g., Watanabe & Suzuki, 1969), with the first summaries published in the early-to-mid 1970s (Suzuki, 1973a, 1973b; Ono, 1976). The number of analysed obsidian samples for Japan until now is perhaps several hundred thousand.