ARCHAEOLOGIA JAPONICA

Overview
TANIGAWA Akio1
At the beginning of the 21st century, Japan is in a period of large change. Social
disparity and aging society due to a decreasing birthrate are being actualized amongst
economic globalism. Movements of archaeological study are not unrelated with suchsocial conditions. Such situations seem to lie in the background of a drastic decline ofresearchers supporting regional study, a serious shortage of personnel in municipalities,
problems of educational environments and education of future generations of researchers.
Research movements of each period and region will be discussed in later articles, so
the author would like to mention some issues.
Natural scientiﬁc methods of analysis account for a signiﬁcant place in archaeologicalstudy mainly from the Paleolithic to Kofun period. Its themes are varied such as dating
measurement, paleoenvironment/paleoclimate, quarries/materials, reconstruction ofsubsistence, anthropology including physical/DNA analysis, excavation methods, andso on. Speciﬁcally, these include paleoenvironmental/paleoclimatic reconstruction on
the origin, diffusion, and adaptation of mankind in the Paleolithic, study on quarriesof stone tool materials, fat and starch analysis of organic residue on Jomon pottery,subsistence reconstruction based on carbon/nitrogen isotope analysis of human bones
and seed indentation analysis of Jomon/Yayoi period plant remains by replica methods,
reconstruction of genetic varieties of rice in the Yayoi period using DNA analysis, andreconstruction of feeding by nitrogen/carbon isotope ratio analysis of horse tooth enamel
excavated from Kofun period to medieval sites.
Three-dimensional presentation of features and artifacts using digital technology isalso a large trend. Large progress is seen especially in airborne laser survey of Kofun
period imperial mausoleums, and in constructing and planning study of keyhole-shaped
mounded tombs using ground-penetrating laser and digital measurement technology.
Thus, overlooking movements of Japanese archaeological research in ﬁscal 2016,
Japanese archaeology in recent years is in a large tide of diversiﬁcation of methodology
and expansion of study subjects. In addition to ordinary analysis methods of archaeology,
methods of natural scientiﬁc analysis were positively introduced, and outstanding
1 c/o

Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, 1–104 Totsuka-machi, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo
169–8050, Japan(E-mail address not disclosed)JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 6 (2018): 56–57© Japanese Archaeological Association

56

JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 6 (2018): 56–57

TRENDS ●●●●IN ARCHAEOLOGYTITLE ●●●●IN JAPAN

progress was achieved in dating, reconstruction of paleoenvironment/paleoclimates, andso on. Also, for archaeological interpretation, movement is seen in taking in results andframeworks of thoughts of close academic ﬁelds like cultural anthropology and history.
In addition to expansion of analyzed subjects due to diversiﬁcation of methodology,
research and study of modern and contemporary sites are being conducted, while they
were hardly handled by archaeology in the past. How to handle such diversiﬁcation ofmethodology and expansion of study subjects is a large issue in the future.
Also, as it was mentioned in the beginning, the society surrounding archaeology ishaving a period of big changes, and Japanese archaeology is facing serious problems suchas a drastic decline of researchers supporting regional study, a serious shortage of humanresources in municipalities, a deteriorating educational environment and development of
future scholars in universities, and so on.
On the other hand, archaeology in Japan has been taking a consistent path in its long
history of overlooking the whole archipelago based on steady research/study in eachregion. How to relate results of archaeological study in each region to archaeology of
the whole country is, as mentioned above, leading to the problem of education of futuregeneration of archaeologists.

© Japanese Archaeological Association57