The is a special technique to make microblades, proposed by Japanese scholar Yoshizaki in 1961, based on his finds in some

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

sites in

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

, Japan, which date from c. 13,000 BP. The name comes from the , on the right bank of which the Palaeolithic sites were discovered. To make microblades by this technique, a large

biface A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a Prehistory, prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history. It is made from stone, usually flint or chert that has been "reduced" and shaped from a larger ...

is made into a core which looks like a tall carinated scraper. Then one lateral edge of the bifacial core is removed, producing at first a triangular spall. After, more edge removals will produce ski spalls of parallel surfaces. This technique was also used from

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

to the

Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

during the later Pleistocene.

References

* 江坂輝爾, 芹沢長介, 坂詰秀一, 『新日本考古学小辞典』（2005）p416 * 千葉英一, 吉崎昌一, 横山英介, 「湧別技法」『考古学ジャーナル』（1984）p229 {{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded Archaeology of Japan Lithics Upper Paleolithic