Late Australian

The East Asian landmass is as environmentally and culturally diverse as any region of the world, and its prehistory is no less varied. Combine it with Oceania, as we have in this volume, and one is faced with an enormous range of environments, of prehistoric peoples, and of their cultural adaptations. To give coherence to the diversity presented in this volume, I find it useful to divide the prehistory of the East Asia and Oceania into three broad categories: (1) Paleolithic and later food collectors; (2) food producers and complex societies of East Asia; and (3) the peoples of Oceania. Each of these categories blends into the others, but each also contains a set of common elements and, to some extent, a history of cultural development. Late Australian represents the period following the arrival of the sea at close to its present level (+/) 1 m). Archaeological evidence from across the country suggests that the long-distance exchange networks observed historically arose during the mid-late Holocene.