Yayoi News and Articles
Fujio, Shin'ichiro (1999) The Formation of Yayoi Culture in Fukuoka Plain: The Interaction between Hunter-gatherers and Agrarian. Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History 77, 51-84.
Abstract: Yayoi is a complex culture based on the preceeding Jomon and a newly introduced culture from the continent and Korean Peninsula. It has been debated who played a major role in the formation of Yayoi culture; the Jomon people or Chinese-Korean immigrants. Archaeologists have compared and contrasted a variety of elements in the Jomon and the Yayoi cultures. Two alternative models above have been proposed by focusing either continuities or discontinuities between the two cultures. However, both persisting and newly introduced elements are equally important to understand the process of cultural transformation. And therefore, this study proposes a more holistic approach to the formation of Yayoi culture.
The author considers the formation of Yayoi culture as the process of cultural change associated with an economic transformation from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economy. The study aims to clarify the role of Jomon and Korean immigrants in this cultural and economic transformation.
The paper first surveys each site in the Fukuoka plain based on the distribution of cooking pottery, the type of wet rice paddy fields, the history of site occupation. It identifies three types of cultural transformation, each differs in the reason of subsistence change, the process of transformation, the time and the place in the achievement of agricultural economy, and the associated pottery. The three types of cultural transformation are tenatively called here as Naka, Itazuke, and Shika. In the former two, both indigenous people and immigrants together formed a social unit. the economic transformation was achieved by the cooperation of the two groups and not by the initiative of either one of the two.
This case study parallels studies on the Westernization of minority cultures. Westernization cannot be explained by the single contributor model, either the minority or the westerner. Similarly, the study concludes that the dichotomy of the indigenous versus the diffusion model is inappropriate for the explanation of the formation of Yayoi culture.
Urn Reveals Oldest Image of Whaling
(Japan Times, June 2000) Read the article here.
REMAINS SHED LIGHT ON YAYOI BURIALS
(Japan Times, November 23, 1999)
Two unusual burials were found in the course of excavation of the Shinpo site in the Nishi ward of Kobe City. The first was that of a man, aged 30-40 years old, whose legs were crossed at the upper femur and crossed again at the shins. No other burials with this flexed leg arrangement have been found. The second burial was that of a woman aged 50-60 years old. The bones showed abnormal growth, physical anthropologists think the woman may have suffered from tuberculosis, or bone tumors.
TIES TO CHINA UNEARTHED FROM YOSHINOGARI RUINS
(Japan Times, March 18, 1999)
This article is an interview with Tadaaki SHICHIDA, chief researcher at the Yoshinogari ruins in Saga Prefecture. To date, over 2500 jar burials have been recovered from the site's cemetery, and numerous pit houses and tower structures have been excavated. The majority of the ruins at the site date to 250 BC to AD 250; though some structures dating to the Final Jomon period have been unearthed.
Read the article here.