Paper short abstract:

This study describes some findings on the Ainu society of the 17th century through a comparison between the letters written by Girolamo de Angelis, an Italian Jesuit missionary who visited Ezo in 1618, and the results of our archaeological research.

Paper long abstract:

Girolamo de Angelis, an Italian, visited Japan as a Jesuit missionary. In 1618, he stayed in Ezo (currently, Hokkaido), which was located in the northern part of the Japanese Islands, for ten days and wrote about what he saw and heard during his stay to the Society of Jesus. Today, these letters have become valuable records of the history of Japan and customs of Ainu, who lived in Ezo at the time of Angelis's visit.This study examines the part in Angelis's letters describing the cultural customs of Ainu. Subsequently, it discusses what was found about the Ainu society of the 17th century through a comparison between the letters and the results of our archaeological research of the remains of this society.We analyzed the graves of Ainu in Usu district, Date City, whose periods can be identified by the ashes of two volcanic explosions, one each in 1640 and 1663. The items analyzed were burial methods by period, the relations between the burial methods and genders/ages of the dead persons, and the types/amounts of grave goods.The results showed that the Ainu followed two burial methods in the 17th century: one was to put a dead body in a wooden coffin and the other to wrap the dead body with a mat made from a plant (kina in Ainu, or goza in Japanese). While Angelis wrote that the difference in the burial methods was determined by the difference between the rich and poor, our research results showed no difference in grave structure or the amount of grave goods between the two burial methods.These facts indicate that the Ainu society at the time was not a distinctive class society and featured only mild differences between the rich and poor. The research results also indicate that the Ainu wanted to provide within the graves things that would be needed by a dead person in the world of the dead.

Paper short abstract:

This paper evaluates the role of grinding stones in the processing of wild plants by analysing starch granules extracted from stone artefacts dating to the early-to-middle Jomon period of northern Japan.

Paper long abstract:

The thorough reconstruction of prehistoric technologies and their role in food processing remains one of the most challenging questions in archaeological research. This is especially the case because perishable materials are usually poorly preserved in the archaeological record, and direct evidence linking tools to specific plant foods is often lacking. This question has proved problematic in the case of archaeological assemblages dated to the Jomon period (between 15,000 cal BP and 2,500 cal BP) in Japan.

Due to recent large-scale land development, plant remains excavated from lowland sites have been studied extensively over the last thirty years. Recent progress in technique development has also enabled the study of plant remains, in many cases previously impossible. In addition, refinements in radiocarbon dating from the year 2000 and onwards have enabled more precise discussion of the detailed relationships between pottery types, environmental transitions, human activities, and the fine sequence of remains that occur at a site. Thus, on the basis of current results, it is clear that the Jomon people were not simply hunter-gatherers but that they intensively utilised various plant resources around their settlements since at least the early Jomon period, around 7,000 cal BP.

This paper evaluates the role of grinding stones in the processing of wild plants by analysing starch granules extracted from stone artefacts dating to the early-to-middle Jomon period of northern Japan. Macro- and microbotanical remains demonstrate the presence of different kinds of plant resources, while the former provide evidence for the intensive processing of nuts and acorns. Starch granules that remain on grinding stones are primarily derived from nuts and acorns, but there is also some evidence for the presence of geophytes mostly from within the family Liliaceae. On the basis of these results, we reevaluate the hypothesis that intensive processing of nuts and acorns was conducted as a basic form of wild plant food production during the early-to-middle Jomon period. Starch residue patterns can reveal traces of the systematic use of grinding stones, the role and costs of processing technology, and the relative value of wild plant resources.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we analyze the evolution of modern archaeology in Japan, with a special emphasis on the formation of concepts related to the unwritten past. In this process, we can observe that the recognition of a "prehistoric past" did not involve finally the adoption of the term "Prehistory".

Paper long abstract:

Since the publication of Prehistoric Japan (1908) by the Scottish anthropologist N. G. Munro (1863-1942), the use of the terms "Prehistory" and "Prehistoric" in the West to refer to the oldest cultures discovered in the Japanese archipelago has been a widespread custom up to the present day (Gerard J. Groot, The Prehistory of Japan, 1951; J. Edward Kidder Jr., Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jōmon Pottery, 1968; C. Melvin Aikens and Takayasu Higuchi, Prehistory of Japan, 1982; Imamura Keiji, Prehistoric Japan: New perspectives on insular East Asia, 1996; etc.). However, at the same time, Japanese archaeologists have been traditionally reluctant to use the equivalent terms in Japanese (senshi / senshi-jidai), using instead the specific names of archaeological periods and cultures (Kyūsekki jidai -Paleolithic Period-, Jōmon jidai -Jōmon Period-, etc.). This divergence is not only a purely or mainly terminological question, but is deeply related to the construction of archaeological periodization schemes in Japan since the 19th century. In this talk, we analyze the establishment and evolution of archaeological studies in Modern Japan, with a special emphasis on the formation of concepts related to the unwritten past, from the 1870s through to the 1940s. The history of Japanese archaeology shows how the introduction of this discipline in a very different context (Japan) from that in which it was developed originally (Europe and America) did not entail the uncritical acceptance and diffusion of Western ideas. Although Western archaeological thought provided the initial categories by means of which material remains were classified, the recognition of archaeology as a scientific discipline in Japan was followed by a considerable intellectual and conceptual adjustment. In particular, we can observe that the recognition of a past that preceded historical records did not involve finally the adoption of the term "Prehistory".