A BRIEF REPORT ON THE GSI WEEK:INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM‘MIGRATION AND MEMORY OF PLACE’DATE OF EVENT: DECEMBER 1, 2023
LOCATION: CENTER FOR AINU AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES, HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY & ZOOMNUMBER OF PERSONS ATTENDING: 32 (ONLINE PARTICIPANTS INCLUDED)

1Symposium : Migration and Memory of Place
Introduction‘Human Migration’ has been one of the mainfeatures of our long human history. As
represented by travel, humans have a highinterest in unknown lands yet to be seen andare still on the move. Human migrations havegiven rise to group contacts, which in turn havetriggered the creation of new cultures. The
culture diversity of humans has been formed
through repeated history of such migration andcultural contact. The diversity of humancultures reflects the natural diversity on Earthand is also a product of the interaction between
humans and the environment.
In this workshop, we discuss the historyof human migrations in Europe and Northeast Asia during the Medieval times, thesociocultural phenomena that resulted from their impact, and the formation of new identities.
Also, the importance of memories and histories of human activities embedded in place names
is discussed. Furthermore, there are various factors behind the human behavior of humanmigration. Volcanic activity and climate change have been understood as one of the main
drivers of 'human migration.' What is important is human resilience to this environmental
change and adaptation to the new environment. This workshop discusses the background of
the diversity of human cultures, using the keywords 'human migration' and 'memory'.

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Program

13:00-13:10 Opening Speech

13:10-13:50 Norse Migration in the Viking Age: from ‘Expansion’ to ‘Diaspora’
Prof. Neil PRICE (Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden and GSI)

14:00-14:40 Okhotsk Migration in NE Asia: Colonization and Cultural Integration
Prof. Hirofumi KATO (Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan and GSI)
14:40-15:00 BREAK
15:00-15:40 Sámi Mobilities in Colonial Spaces’ Border, Identities, and the Right to Make aHome
Dr. Carl-Gösta OJALA(Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden and GSI)

15:50-16:30 Aboriginal placenames and geospatial data: Promoting truth-telling andunderstanding of the Country.
Dr. Kristen SMITH and Mr. Levi MURRAY(University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia)

16:40-17:20 Environmental Catastrophes Drive Human Migration: Apocalyptic Scenes fromA Prehistoric “Super-Eruption”
Prof. Peter JORDAN (Lund University, Lund, Sweden and GSI)

17:30-18:00 The theory of cultural transmission and studies of social contacts of huntergatherers
Mr. Aleksandr ULANOV (Hokkaido University Sapporo, Japan)

18:00-18:20 General Discussion

18:20-18:30 Concluding Remarks
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Presentation Abstract(1) Norse Migration in the Viking Age: from ‘Expansion’ to ‘Diaspora’
Prof. Neil PRICE (Uppsala University and GSI)

Since the early nineteenth century, scholars and thepublic alike have conceived of a so-called ‘Viking Age,’a term describing the approximate period 750-1050
CE when the peoples of Scandinavia began to raid,trade, and travel extensively across the Eurasian world.
In more recent years, however, not only theconceptualization of the ‘Vikings’ has come intoquestion, but also the premises on which we
characterize what has long been thought of as their ‘expansion’ – a notion that has now beensuperseded by the more ambiguous, reciprocal and flexible language of ‘diaspora’. Central tothis debate is the fact of movement, whether through violence, mercantile ambition,exploration, or settlement and thus ultimately the question of migration. Linked to this arerelated questions as to when, why, and precisely where all this was taking place and the wide
variety of motives or imperatives behind it. In essence, researchers are now tentatively
shaping a multivocal and pluralistic redefinition of what the Viking Age was, how it ‘began’and ‘ended,’ and not least, a reassessment of the complicated and contested legacies thatstill resonate in the social conversation today. This talk examines these issues, discussing thepopulation movements of the early medieval North in terms of ethnicity and identity and theintricate socio-political geographies of the diaspora itself.

(2) Okhotsk Migration in NE Asia: Colonization and Cultural Integration
Prof. Hirofumi KATO (Hokkaido University and GSI)

In Northeast Asian, the maritime hunter culture
expanded from the northwest coast to the southerncoast of the Okhotsk sea after the 6th century. Thisarchaeological phenomenon is known as the4

"Okhotsk culture," it greatly influenced the subsequent formation of peoples along the Seaof Okhotsk coast. From southern Sakhalin Island to Hokkaido Island, it is known that thisculture of marine hunters encountered the local culture, which was linked to the formationof the Ainu and their culture. The migration of human groups, including fur trade networks,
the distribution of metal products, and the development of bear ceremonies, caused thiscultural integration. This report discusses the socio-cultural impact of this migration
phenomenon of maritime peoples based on the results of recent research on Rebun Island.

(3) Sámi Mobilities in Colonial Spaces’ Border, Identities, and the Right to Make a Home
Dr. Carl-Gösta OJALA (Uppsala University and GSI)

This paper discusses Sámi mobilities within colonial
spaces and power dynamics. Focusing on voluntaryand involuntary Sámi mobilities in the early modernperiod, the paper also addresses Sámi early modernmaterial objects in motion and the collecting andexchangeofSámi ancestralremains.

Recenthomecomings of Sámi material culture and ancestral
remains, as part of cultural revitalization, repatriation, and decolonization processes,demonstrate the development of new mobilities and power dynamics. Challenging colonial
notions of Sámi people as being bound to the perceived traditional Sámi domains, as well as
the nationalist cartographies projected in much of earlier research, this paper aims tostimulate a rethinking of Sámi mobility and agency and the right to make a home. The main
focus of the paper is on present-day Sweden, but with comparative perspectives fromNorway, Finland, and northwestern Russia. In the paper, Sámi-related place names are also
discussed as a way of exploring histories of Sámi mobilities and homemaking within andbeyond present-day Sápmi.

(4) Aboriginal placenames and geospatial data: Promoting truth-telling andunderstanding of Country.
Kristen SMITH and Levi MURRAY (University of Melbourne)

5Indigenous placenames and their embedded
Indigenous Knowledges represent a criticalmechanismtopromotetruth-tellingandunderstanding of Country for Indigenous peoples
in Australia and internationally. Article 13.1 of theUnited Nations Declaration of the Rights ofIndigenous People outlines the right of Indigenous
peoples to “revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories,
languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate andretain their own names for communities, places and persons” (UNDRIP 2007). Australia is oneof 144 signatories to this Declaration, yet the formal restoration of Aboriginal placenames
remains a point of controversy across much of mainstream Australia. In this paper, we discuss
the space-place gap in geographic information system science and spatial technologies andoutline the work in progress by the Indigenous Data Network to re-embed Indigenous
Knowledges in national geospatial frameworks and digital infrastructure of Australia. Thiswork aims to bind Indigenous Knowledges to standard spatial data practices used by researchcommunities and other stakeholders, including national and international governments. It
also supports ongoing efforts to highlight the significance of Indigenous Knowledges of places
and Indigenous communities and peoples for both economic development and broader
mainstream visibility, which is inalienable from national recognition and truth-telling.
(5) Environmental Catastrophes Drive Human Migration: Apocalyptic Scenes from A
Prehistoric “Super-Eruption”
Prof. Peter JORDAN (Lund University and GSI)

Today around three billion people live in close
proximity to volcanic geohazards including
many Indigenous cultures and descendentcommunities. This paper examines the degreetowhichTLK(“TraditionalandLocalKnowledge”) Systems can ever evolve to copewith living, surviving and indeed thriving in high-risk geological environments, where6

adaptation to one catastrophe shapes cultural and ecological responses to the next. In mostcases, migration and long-range social networks are deployed to bolster resilience andsupport eventual human return to damaged landscapes and ecosystems which tend torecover at different rates. These processes are viewed within a long-term historicalperspective to understand how extreme events of unexpected magnitudes may stretch
traditional coping mechanisms to breaking point, preventing cultures from returning to theirprevious developmental pathways, and tipping them into entirely different trajectories. The
paper presents emerging results from CALDERA, a new Nordic-Japan research initiative
focusing on the cultural significance of catastrophic environmental shocks. The main casestudy examines how prehistoric populations in Northeast Asia started to “worship” volcanic
geohazards as part of a wider suite of coping mechanisms, but were eventually overwhelmedby impacts of a volcanic “super-eruption”, one of the largest globally in the last 10,000 years.
This extreme disaster triggered both major loss of life, but also significant out-migration, andthe eventual return of humans to island ecosystems utterly transformed by the catastrophe
and its enduring ecological legacies. The paper concludes with a brief overview of future plans
and activities, and argues that much more empirical work is required to critique simplistic
notions of “collapse” and also “resilience”, as neither capture the full complexity andhistorical contingency of cultural responses to abrupt environmental “forcing” mechanisms.

(6) The theory of cultural transmission and studies of social contacts of hunter-gatherers
Mr. Aleksandr ULANOV (Hokkaido University, Japan)

The theory of cultural transmission and related
conceptions of cultural convergence and social
intimacy have an important epistemological andmethodological role in current anthropological andarchaeological studies. Epistemology of current
cultural transmission is highly interesting because itis critical, on the one hand, toward the traditional
culture-historical approach, and on the other hand, toward cultural transmission theory when
it applies to research models borrowed from biological studies. Cultural transmission theory
and culture-historical theory have a common origin. However, the current theory of cultural7

transmission criticizes ethnocentric and purely typological views of culture-historicalarchaeology. The object of critics inside the theory of cultural transmission is the phylogenetic
studies of material culture and other direct analogies from biological studies. This
problematization of a biological discourse in archaeology and anthropology seems valuablefor the current anthropology and decolonization narrative. The biological narrative ofacademic discourse is a vivid mark of the colonial approach in anthropology. Thus, in thissense “debiologization” of cultural studies means decolonization.

Methodologically cultural transmission theory aimed to explain diversity in material culture
as well as temporal and spatial spread of phenomena of material culture. The spread ofcertain types of material culture objects could be studied in the frameworks of the theory ofcultural transmission, in the middle-range theory of stimulus diffusion, or in the theory ofcultural convergence. All these theories are based on the assumption of social contacts ofdifferent intensities. The cultural transmission process requires close social contact. Stimulus
diffusion related to social contact of low intimacy (for example visiting the camp’s edge). The
cultural convergence process is related to the emergence of similar types of artifacts indifferent social groups without social contact.

However, there are significant similarities between the results of the cultural convergenceprocess and stimulus diffusion. The result of both social processes is the emergence ofartifacts with similar morphology and different technologies of production in several regions.
Differentiating these two social processes requires specific research procedures such as
examination of the geographical spread of the artifact’s type and chronology of theemergence of this type in both study regions. In other words, an analysis of the probability ofsocial contact is required.

Another vital research procedure for the studies of cultural convergence is the developmentof the morphospace model. However, examples of differences between mouth harps incontinental Siberia (vargan, khomus) made of metal and in Hokkaido (mukkury) made ofbamboo demonstrate that the range of possible raw materials needs to be examined as wellas the range of possible morphology.

8Research problems of cultural transmission, cultural convergence, and stimulus diffusion
studies demonstrate common methodological challenges of archaeological and cultural
anthropological methodology and the possibility of interdisciplinary collaboration in this field.
Studies of the spatial spread of types of artifacts in this methodological framework spot lighton the social processes of migration or cultural exchange.

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