TRENDS IN ARCHAEOLOGY IN JAPANInterdisciplinary ResearchITAHASHI Yū11.

Interdisciplinary Research

Several journals published feature articles on interdisciplinary research this ﬁscal year.
The Kikan Kōkogaku 150 special issue on “Kōkogaku wa doko e ikunoka?” (Where IsArchaeology Going?); a major theme of the roundtable discussion was interdisciplinary
research between archaeology and the natural sciences. Kikan Kōkogaku bessatsu
supplementary volume 31 summarized the archaeology symposium held to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the Yūzankaku publishing company, “Kōkogaku no hyakunen:Gakusai kenkyū no ima” (100 Years of Archaeology: Interdisciplinary ResearchToday), held in 2016 under the title “Jōmon bunka to gakusai kenkyū no ima.” With theaccumulation and popularization of interdisciplinary research, there seems to be a trend
now to look back at the history of academia in considering the future of interdisciplinary
research in archaeology.

2.

Pottery

Kōkogaku Journal 724 featured a special issue on the analysis of pottery and other ﬁred clay
objects under the title of “Taido bunseki no genjō to tenkai (Current State and Developmentof Clay Component Analysis).” Shōda et al. conducted carbon isotope analysis of fatty acids
extracted from pottery from the Late Glacial (16,000–10,000 BP) found from the Amur
region in Far Eastern Russia, in order to interpret the purpose of use of the earliest pottery,which was veriﬁed by comparison with Japanese pottery (Quat. Sci. Rev. 229).

3.

Paleoenvironment

Two symposia were held this ﬁscal year regarding changes in human society resulting fromclimate change. The impact of global cold weather events 4.3 ka and 2.8 ka on societies inwestern Japan was discussed at the symposium “Kankyō henka to seigyō kara mita shakai
1 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305–8571, Japan(itahashi.yu.ga@u.tsukuba.ac.jp)

JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9 (2021): 87–89© Japanese Archaeological Association

87

JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9 (2021): 87–89

●●● Author JAPONICA●●●
ARCHAEOLOGIAhendō” (Changes in Society and Subsistence from the Perspective of Climate Change) heldby the Japanese Archaeological Association on October 26 and 27, 2019. At “Kikō hendōto kodai Nishi Asia” (Climate Change and Ancient West Asia), organized by the Japan
Society for West Asian Archaeology on February 1 and 2, 2020, the impact of climatechange on the rise and fall of cultures in West Asia was discussed, from the spread ofNeanderthals to the destruction of the Hittite Empire.

4. Archaeobotany
On December 7 and 8, 2019, the symposium “Shu no dōtei e no chōsen” (The Challengeof Species Identiﬁcation)” was held at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Associationof Historical Botany. With the introduction of new methods, it has become possible
to identify cultivated, wild, and closely related species as well as color and dormancy
characteristics of plants of the past which were diﬃcult to identify only by observing themorphology of seeds and pollen.

5.

Zooarchaeology

The recent establishment of new indicators has made the identiﬁcation of animal species
and domesticated types more accurate. For example, Eda et al. introduced the eﬀectivenessof the medullary bone as an indicator of bird utilization. (Sekai to Nihon no kōkogaku.
Tokyo: Rokuichi Shobō). The medullary bone forms only in the bone marrow cavity of theegg-laying female bird and is therefore an indicator of the killing of the egg-laying female.
If a medullary bone is found in a migratory bird of which wild types do not breed in Japan,
it indicates this individual is a domesticated bird.

6. Anthropology
Several studies focusing on oral health in archaic human bones were published in thisﬁscal year. Sawafuji et al. published the result of DNA analysis in the dental calculus ofpopulations in the Edo period (PLoS One 15-3). Dental calculus contains residues, suchas food and tobacco, remaining in the mouth, and by examining the DNA of the dental
calculus, it is possible to identify the plants and animals that the individual consumed atthe species level.

7.

Genetic Background of Japanese Revealed by Ancient DNA

In the past few years, DNA analysis of ancient human remains in Japan has been published© Japanese Archaeological Association88

●●●TRENDSTITLE（※メインタイIN ARCHAEOLOGY
トルのみ。長体可）●●●IN JAPAN

continuously, revealing not only the phylogenetic relationship between modern Japaneseand neighboring populations, but also the genetic background of Japanese populations ofthe past. Kanzawa et al. showed that the Jōmon population in Hokkaido diverged from theEast Eurasian continental populations in very ancient times and was isolated for a longtime (Anthropol. Sci. 127-2). Takahashi et al. reported the results of mitochondrial DNA
analysis of human bones of the Jōmon, Kofun, and Heian periods excavated from theShōmyōji shell mound in Yokohama (Anthropol. Sci. 127-1). The diﬀerences between themitochondrial DNA haplotypes of the Kofun and Heian periods in Shōmyōji shell moundsand those of the Jōmon period indicate that by the Kofun period, genotypic change in theancient Japanese of the Jōmon population had already occurred. Nuclear genome analysisof males and females of the late Yayoi period excavated from the Shimomotoyama rockshelter site at Sasebo indicates that the mingling of Jōmon types and migrant types in
Kyushu during the Yayoi period was more than previously expected (SHINODA et al.,Anthropol. Sci. J-Ser. 127-1).
(written by the author)© Japanese Archaeological Association89