SPECIAL SECTION:LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY OF PREHISTORICHUNTER-GATHERERS: ECOLOGY, MATERIALCULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY EXAMINED AT
MULTIPLE TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL SCALES,PART I
ABSTRACTThe goal of this special section is to discuss how landscape archaeology of prehistoric huntergatherers, including Jomon hunter-gatherers of prehistoric Japan, can contribute to the interand trans-disciplinary discussion of long-term changes in human cultures and societies. Using theconcept of landscape as the common starting point, papers in this section explore the ways in which
diﬀerent forms of environmental and social knowledge may persist through time, are manifest inlandscapes, and remain relevant to contemporary environmental and sociopolitical challenges.
Topics examined in these papers include mechanisms of culture change at multiple spatiotemporalscales, systems’ resilience in relation to the continuity and change in landscape practices, andknowledge transmission at the intersection of landscape, material culture, and Indigenous andtraditional ecological knowledge. Papers in this section were originally presented at the special
English session of the 85th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Archaeological Association atKomazawa University, Tokyo on 19 May 2019.

The Objectives of the Section: Landscape Archaeologyof Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers
HABU Junko1 & Simon KANER2
The goal of this special section is to discuss how landscape archaeology of prehistoric
hunter-gatherers, including Jomon hunter-gatherers of prehistoric Japan, can contributeto the inter- and trans-disciplinary discussion of long-term changes in human culturesand societies. Using the concept of landscape as the common starting point, papers in thissection explore the ways in which diﬀerent forms of environmental and social knowledge
may persist through time, are manifest in landscapes, and remain relevant to contemporary
1 Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 232 Anthropology and Art Practice Building,Berkeley, CA 94720–3710 USA(habu@berkeley.edu)
2 Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 64 Close, Norwich, NR1 4DH, UK(s.kaner@sainsbury-institute.org)
Category: Section Introduction
JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 8 (2021): 203–207

HABU Junko & Simon KANER

environmental and sociopolitical challenges. Topics examined in these papers include
mechanisms of culture change at multiple spatiotemporal scales, systems’ resilience inrelation to the continuity and change in landscape practice, and knowledge transmission atthe intersection of landscape, material culture, and Indigenous and traditional ecologicalknowledge. Early versions of the papers in this special section were presented at theEnglish-language session (Landscape Archaeology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers:
Ecology and Material Culture Examined at Multiple Temporal and Spatial Scales) of the85th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Archaeological Association (JAA) at Komazawa
University, Tokyo on 19 May, 2019.
As Part I of the special section in Japanese Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8, No.
2, we are pleased to present three of the ﬁve papers that were originally presented at the2019 JAA English-language session. The remaining two papers will be published in thenext issue of the Japanese Journal of Archaeology. The three papers demonstrate thepotential of contemporary and comparative approaches to landscape archaeology of huntergatherers. Focusing on the idea of landscape stewardship practices, Kent Lightfoot provides
archaeological evidence for active modifications and construction of anthropogenic
landscapes to augment resource productivity of local environments in California anddiscusses how current interpretations about Indigenous stewardship practices in California
and Japan compare to each other. Citing extensive English-language sources and drawing
on the result of a least cost path analysis using bathymetric data, Kevin Gibbs provides fairassessments of both multiple-centre and single-origin perspectives on pottery invention in
East Asia. Taking an approach that recognizes landscapes as lived experiences, Lisa Maher
emphasizes the contribution of micromorphological studies through which archaeologists
can approach the creation, maintenance and transformation of human-landscapeinterrelationships by presenting her case studies at the Karanah IV site in Jordan and theGoshizawa Matsumori No. 4 site of Jomon Japan. Together, these three papers provide
innovative comparative perspectives on aspects of the archaeology of the prehistoric Jomon
period (ca. 16,000–2500 cal. BP) of the Japanese archipelago, and we therefore hope thatthey will be of interest to Japanese as well as non-Japanese readership.
Both landscape archaeology and comparative perspectives on Jomon archaeology havelong lineages of their own within Japanese archaeology. One of the founding ﬁgures ofcontemporary Jomon archaeology, YAMANOUCHI Sugao (e.g., Yamanouchi 1964),
wrote of the comparison with the Indigenous cultures of North America. The tradition of
more explicit comparative analysis, drawing on ethnographic and historical accounts, isexempliﬁed in the volume titled Aﬄuent Foragers in Senri Ethnological Studies (Koyamaand Thomas 1981), in which the intersection of landscape practices, material culture andethnographic accounts began to be actively investigated (e.g., Akimichi 1981; Koyama
1981; Matsuyama 1981; Schalk 1981). Examples of more recent attempts to further© Japanese Archaeological Association

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promote comparative perspectives in the realm of hunter-gatherer archaeology can befound in another edited volume in Senri Ethnological Series (Habu et al. 2002).
The three papers presented here, as well as the two remaining papers from the 2019
JAA English-language session, demonstrate how thinking has further moved on since theprevious studies described above. While the authors of the ﬁve papers all use the conceptof landscape as the common starting point, these papers showcase diﬀerent approaches tothe concept of landscape, which are closely tied to new theoretical developments in thediscussions of landscape archaeology, historical ecology, resilience theory, traditional andIndigenous ecological knowledge, and materiality.
Today, many archaeologists recognize that prehistoric hunter-gatherer-ﬁshers actively
modiﬁed and created anthropogenic landscapes that were directly linked to the resilienceand long-term trajectories of human-environmental interrelationships in diﬀerent parts of
the world. There is increasing awareness and acceptance of hunter-gatherer-ﬁshers having
their own agency and shaping their own histories, either intentionally or unintentionally,rather than being passive adaptors to external environmental determinants. They createdtheir own anthropogenic and culturally meaningful landscapes, processes which we are
beginning to access through increasingly sophisticated archaeological methodologies, suchas soil micromorphology, computer mapping and high-resolution radiocarbon dating. These
approaches can be matched with a rich, fully contextualised engagement with Indigenousand traditional environmental knowledge. This is in turn impacting on some of theconventional understanding of the distinction between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists
and the grand narratives of ‘Neolithization’ with associated technological ‘revolutions,’
including the development of ceramic containers. The studies presented here contributeto the new emerging consensus that the diversity of societies studied by archaeologists
and anthropologists are deserving of more than the generalising and reductive accounts ofunilineal evolutionary processes leading to a priori outcomes (farming, sedentism, socialcomplexity), demanded by all-too-often Eurocentric notions of the stages of human history.
These new, diverse, micro-historical approaches oﬀer a more nuanced understandingof ecology, humanity and our relationship with the planet we inhabit. As such, they speak
to the big themes of our Anthropocene age: the long-term sustainability of societies; theeﬃcacy of human responses to processes often recognised as ‘disaster,’ including pandemic
and climate change; the nurturing of bio-, food- and socio-diversity.
The papers here speak to a new era of collaborative research involving both Japaneseand non-Japanese researchers. They each reference engagement with long-term multidisciplinary international research projects that draw on the long experience of many of
those involved, while creating new opportunities for both early-career and establishedspecialists, and new forms of public and community engagement. They showcase theadvantages brought through fostering strong networks and open scholarship. As such,© Japanese Archaeological Association

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we feel that these papers embody the cooperative spirit in which the Japanese Journal ofArchaeology was established.

Acknowledgements
Early versions of the papers in this special section were presented at the English-language
session “Landscape Archaeology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: Ecology and MaterialCulture Examined at Multiple Temporal and Spatial Scales” of the 85th Annual Meetingof the Japanese Archaeological Association (JAA) at Komazawa University, Tokyo on
19 May 2019. We would like to thank Daniel Niles and Lisa Maher, who co-organized
the session with us. We also thank the members of the Editorial Board of the Japanese
Journal of Archaeology, including MIZOGUCHI Koji and SASAKI Ken’ichi, for theirlogistical and moral support. The session was sponsored by the 2018–2022 Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science Grant for the Japanese Journal of Archaeology (Project No.
18HP2012).
This special section is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth M. Ames (1945–2019),
whose work on the archaeology of people of the Northwest Coast of North America
inspired a generation of archaeologists, including those in Japan.

References
Akimichi, T. 1981. Riverine fisheries in nineteenth century Hida, in S. Koyama &D.H. Thomas (ed.) Aﬄuent foragers: Paciﬁc Coast east and west: 141–156. Senri
Ethnological Studies No. 9. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.
Habu, J., J.M. Savelle, S. Koyama & H. Hongo (ed.) 2003. Hunter-gatherers of the North
Paciﬁc Rim. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 63. Osaka, Japan: National Museum ofEthnology.
Koyama, S. 1981. A quantitative study of wild food resources: an example from Hida, in S.
Koyama & D.H. Thomas (ed.) Aﬄuent foragers: Paciﬁc Coast east and west: 91–115.
Senri Ethnological Studies No. 9. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.
Koyama, S. & D.H. Thomas (ed.) 1981. Aﬄuent foragers: Paciﬁc Coast east and west.
Senri Ethnological Studies No. 9. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.
Matsuyama, T. 1981. Nut gathering and processing methods in traditional Japanesevillages, in S. Koyama & D.H. Thomas (ed.) Aﬄuent foragers: Paciﬁc Coast east andwest: 117–139. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 9. Osaka, Japan: National Museum ofEthnology.
Schalk, R.F. 1981. Land use and organizational complexity among foragers of northwestern
North America, in S. Koyama & D.H. Thomas (ed.) Aﬄuent foragers: Paciﬁc Coasteast and west: 53–75. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 9. Osaka, Japan: National© Japanese Archaeological Association206

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Museum of Ethnology.
Yamanouchi, S. 1964. The outline of Japanese prehistory, in Primitive art in Japan, Vol. 1:
Jomon pottery: 135–158. Tokyo: Kodansha. 山内清男 1964．日本先史時代概説．日本
原始美術 I 縄文式土器．pp. 135–158. 東京：講談社．

特集：先史時代狩猟採集民の景観考古学— 交錯する
時空間スケールからみた生態系、物質文化と持続可能性（その 1）
羽生淳子，サイモン・ケイナー

和文要旨

本特集では、縄文時代をはじめとする先史時代狩猟採集民の景観に関する考古学が、文化・社会の長期的変化に関する学際的・超学際的な研究にどのように寄与できるのかを考える。各著者は、景観の概念を共通の出発点として、多様な形をとる環境知・社会知がどのようにして歴史的に継承されるのかを考察する。このような研究は、現代社会における環境・社会・政治問題を考える際に有効な示唆を与えてくれる。各論文が扱うテーマは、複数の時空間スケールからみた文化変化のメカニズム、景観に関わる人間の諸活動の歴史的連続性とその変化からみたシステムのレジリエンス（弾力性・復元力）、景観・物質文化・在来知（先住民族知）複合からみた知識の伝達、など多岐にわたる。
特集論文は、本号（第 8 巻第 2 号：ライトフット、ギブス、マハー）と次号（第 9 巻第 1 号、ケイナー、羽生）にわたって掲載される。これら計 5 本の論文は、日本考古学協会第 85 回総会における英語セッション「 先史時代狩猟採集民の景観考古学— 交錯する時空間スケールからみた物質文化と持続可能性—」（2019 年 5 月 19 日、駒沢大学 ）での発表をもとに大幅に加筆・改稿されたものである。同セッションは、独立法人日本学術振興会科学研究費助成事業「 国際情報発信強化 」
18HP2012 の助成を受けた。

© Japanese Archaeological Association207