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Understanding Lifeways and
Biocultural Diversity in Prehistoric Japan

Overview

The goal of this project is to understand past lifeways and biocultural diversity of the early residents of the Japanese archipelago. The focus is to infer changes over time and regional variability in subsistence, settlement, society and health conditions of prehistoric Jomon hunter-gatherers of Japan (ca. 14,500-300 B.C.).  This project consists of the following five parts:

1) Research at Sannai Maruyama, a collaborative field/laboratory research and field school at the Early and Middle Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site in Aomori of the Tohoku region (northern Japan).
 
2) Comparative Studies of Jomon data, a comparative study of Jomon archaeological data from northern, central and western Japan.
 
3) Bioarchaeology, a bioarchaeological analysis of  Jomon skeletal material.
 
4) Workshops, three workshops (one in Japan, two at Berkeley) to discuss the results of these sub-projects in the context of East Asian archaeology and other related fields.
 
5) New Course Development, new course development on East Asian archaeology, bioarchaeology, history and art history that will help us integrate the results of this project into our teaching program.

The project, which is administered by the Institute of East Asian Studies of UC Berkeley, is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation through its Luce Initiative on East and Southeast Asian Archaeology and Early Matching funds are provided by the following units and departments of UC Berkeley:
Department of Anthropology
Department of History
Department of Art History
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Institute of East Asian Studies
Center for Japanese Studies
Archaeological Research Facility

 

Background: Japanese Archaeology
Japanese archaeology is an exciting and emerging regional field for several reasons.  First, rapid economic growth after the 1960s has resulted in a large number of rescue excavations throughout the country.  Many of these excavations are large in scale, and cover an area of tens of thousands of square meters.  Results of these excavations not only enrich our understanding of the Japanese past, but they also provide exciting opportunities to test cutting-edge archaeological theories with a large body of data. 

Second, the prehistory and early history of the Japanese archipelago show a highly unique trajectory, which is quite different from those of many other parts of the world.   Specifically, the Japanese prehistoric sequence is characterized by one of the earliest pottery traditions in the world.  This marked the beginning of the Jomon period (ca. 14,500-300 B.C.), a prehistoric hunter-gatherer culture that lasted for over 10,000 years. Despite the sophistication of their material culture and their direct and indirect interactions with Neolithic agriculturalists in China, the people of the Jomon period subsisted primarily by hunting, gathering and fishing until the last millennium B.C.  The Jomon period was followed by the agricultural Yayoi period (ca. 400B.C.–A.D. 250), the time of a rapid development of social stratification, which eventually led to the rise of the early state during the Kofun period (ca. A.D. 250-800). 

Third, sociopolitical contexts of Japanese archaeology provide an interesting case to examine the relationship between archaeology and contemporary society. Interests in archaeology among the Japanese public and media are high.  Archaeological discoveries are commonly front-page news and television specials.  In addition, many Japanese people strongly feel that archaeology is the study of their own direct ancestors.  Under these circumstances, interpretations of archaeological data can easily be used to support or refute particular ideological perspectives, and such interpretations may spread rapidly through the media.  Thus, archaeology is not merely the study of the past, and the examination of the relationship between archaeology and contemporary society is a relevant topic of anthropological studies. 

With its unique combination of both large-scale archaeological field and laboratory research, along with bioarchaeological data, our project offers an exciting opportunity to test contemporary archaeological theories with a large body of data and cutting-edge methodology. Only a few archaeologists in North America specialize in Japanese archaeology, and as a result, Japanese archaeology as a sub-field of anthropological archaeology is significantly under-represented in North America.  The Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley is one of the few American anthropology programs that have a strong component of Japanese archaeology. With support from the Henry Luce Foundation, our aim is make Berkeley a leading center for Japanese archaeology in North America. 

Funded by
Luce Initiative on East and Southeast Asian
Archaeology and Early History
2007-2010