Christopher J. Norton, PhD

Assistant Professor

Background and Research Interests

I was born in Korea to Korean parents. However, from about the age of one I had what many would consider, an atypical upbringing; one that drew me to East Asian paleoanthropology from my earliest days in school. At about the age of one I was orphaned in Seoul, Korea and after living in an orphanage for six months, I was then adopted by an American family. Growing up in a Caucasian-American household and neighborhood always made me aware and interested in topics such as race and human variation. In order to discover my cultural "roots" I traveled to Korea during my undergraduate days on an exchange program. The general goal of paleoanthropology is to reconstruct the past without all the pieces. My original objective in going to Korea was to reconstruct my own past, but I have since expanded this approach to address a diversity of questions about East Asian paleoanthropology.

Since that initial trip to Korea I diversified and have been conducting paleoanthropological field and laboratory research in Japan and China as well. I have been carrying out collaborative research on a diversity of projects (e.g., hominin fossils, vertebrate taphonomy, lithics) in all three countries. Having spent a good part of my time living and becoming acclimated with each country's particular culture has facilitated the development of a strong network of collaborators and collaborations. From the accumulated experience, I believe that the best way to develop a firm understanding of the human evolutionary record in East Asia is to link the hominin morphological and behavioral records. As such, my current research interests crosscut different subdisciplines in anthropology and include studies of Pleistocene hominin morphological and behavioral variation in Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens.

Current Research

I am currently involved with a diversity of research projects that are designed to better synthesize the East Asian paleoanthropological record. The primary ones are:

China Human Evolutionary Research Program. CHERP is a multi-disciplinary research program, involving scientists and student-scientists from China, Japan, North America, and Europe, designed to develop a better understanding of the Chinese paleoanthropological record. By incorporating vertebrate paleontological, archaeological, geological, and chronometric datasets we are developing models to reconstruct Pleistocene hominin lifeways in its biotic setting (Norton et al., 2008). CHERP is currently conducting field research in Shandong Province (central-east China) in the form of exploratory surveying of cave and open-air sites that potentially contain paleoanthropological residues in the form of hominin body and/or trace (hominin modified bone, manuports, lithics) fossils. Central-east China was chosen as the starting point because a diversity of evidence indicates it served as a continuous migration corridor throughout the Quaternary.

Vertebrate taphonomy. I use vertebrate taphonomy to address questions related to reconstructing the evolution of modern human behavior and changing human diet breadth the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in East Asia. In particular, I am involved with a series of taphonomic studies of middle-late Pleistocene and Holocene faunal assemblages in China (Norton and Gao, 2008, in press), Japan (Norton et al., 2007), and Korea (Norton 2000, 2007; Norton et al., 1999). My collaborators and I are also developing experimental taphonomic studies in China.

Movius Line. In the 1940s, the eminent archaeologist Hallam Movius observed that bifacially-worked stone implements are present in much of the western Old World, but absent in eastern Asia during the Pleistocene. This observation came to be known as the Movius Line. Since Movius made this interesting observation, bifaces have been found in several different places in East Asia. However, for the most part, these handaxes, cleavers, and picks are rarer in terms of the number of sites and the number of implements excavated from these sites than in regions like South Asia and East Africa. Furthermore, the handaxes in East Asia are morphologically different, often produced on local river cobbles, they tend to be thicker with fewer flakes knocked off (Norton et al., 2006; Norton and Bae, in press). My colleagues and I are working on further analyzing the nature of this variability.

Selected Publications

Monographs

In press: Norton, C.J., Lam, Y., Jin, J. (Editors). Pleistocene and Early Holocene Hominin Variability in Eastern Asia and Australasia: Current Perspectives. Quaternary International.

2009 Norton, C.J., Braun, D.R. (Editors). Asian Paleoanthropology: From Africa to China and Beyond. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series, Springer Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. (in press)

Publications in Peer-Reviewed Journals

2008 Norton, C.J., Bae, K.D. The Movius Line sensu lato (Norton et al. 2006) further assessed and defined. Journal of Human Evolution 55: 1148-1150.

2008 Norton, C.J., Gao, X. Zhoukoudian Upper Cave revisited: A taphonomic perspective. Current Anthropology 49: 732-745.

2008 Norton, C.J., Gao, X. Hominin-carnivore interactions during the Chinese Early Paleolithic: Taphonomic perspectives from Xujiayao. Journal of Human Evolution 55: 164-178.

2007 Norton, C.J., Hasegawa, Y., Kohno, N., Tomida, Y. Distinguishing archaeological and paleontological faunal collections from Pleistocene Japan: Taphonomic perspectives from Hanaizumi. Anthropological Science 115: 91-106.

2007 Wu X.J., Liu, W., Zhang, Q.C., Norton, C.J. The microevolution of the craniofacial morphological features for the Holocene human populations in north China. Chinese Science Bulletin 52: 1661-1668.

2007 Norton, C.J. Sedentism, territorial circumscription, and the increased use of plant domesticates across Neolithic-Bronze Age Korea. Asian Perspectives 46(1):133-165.

2006 Norton, C.J., Bae, K.D., Harris, J.W.K., Lee, H.Y. Middle Pleistocene handaxes from the Korean Peninsula. Journal of Human Evolution 51: 527-536.

2002 Gao, X., Norton, C.J. Critique of the Chinese “Middle Paleolithic.” Antiquity 76: 397-412.

2000 Norton, C.J. Subsistence change at Konam-ri: implications for the advent of rice agriculture in Korea. Journal of Anthropological Research 56: 325-348.

2000 Norton, C.J. The current state of Korean paleoanthropology. Journal of Human Evolution 38: 803-825.

1999 Norton, C.J., Kim, B.M., Bae, K.D. Differential processing of fish during the Korean Neolithic: Konam-ri. Arctic Anthropology 36(1-2): 151-165.

Contributions to Edited Volumes

2009 Norton, C.J., Gao, X., Feng, X.W. The criteria defining the East Asian Middle Paleolithic reexamined. In: Camps, M., Chauhan, P.R. (Eds.), Sourcebook of Paleolithic Transitions: Methods, Theories, and Interpretations. Springer Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. (in press)

2009 Norton, C.J., Jin, C.Z., Wang, Y., Zhang, Y.Q. Rethinking the Palearctic-Oriental biogeographic boundary in Quaternary China. In: Norton, C.J., Braun, D. (Eds.), Asian Paleoanthropology: From Africa to China and Beyond. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series, Springer Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. (in press)

2009 Norton, C.J., Gao, X., Liu, W., Braun, D., Wu, X.J. Central-East China - a Plio-Pleistocene migration corridor: the current state of evidence for hominin occupations. In: Norton, C.J., Braun, D. (Eds.), Asian Paleoanthropology: From Africa to China and Beyond. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series, Springer Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. (in press)

2009 Braun, D.R., Norton, C.J., Harris, J.W.K. Africa and Asia: Comparisons of the earliest archaeological evidence. In: Norton, C.J., Braun, D. (Eds.), Asian Paleoanthropology: From Africa to China and Beyond. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series, Springer Press, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. (in press)

Additional Information

I have been serving as a co-leader of a working group ("Hominin colonization and its Palaeoenvironmental Contexts in China, Mongolia, and adjoining East Asia") for INQUA's (the International Union for Quaternary Research) Commission on Palaeoecology and Human Evolution (PAHE), working with my close colleagues in China (Gao Xing, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology) and Japan (Ono Akira, Tokyo Metropolitan University). This working group is attempting to synthesize and better understand the East Asian paleoanthropological record in its paleoenvironmental context.

page last updated April 24, 2009