Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T12:53:06.040Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cycles of change in Jomon settlement: a case study from eastern Tokyo Bay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2013

Enrico R. Crema
Enrico R. Crema*
Affiliation:
*Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Japanese archaeology benefits from the large number of rescue excavations conducted during recent decades that have led to an unparalleled record of archaeological sites. That record is here put to use to interrogate changing settlement patterns in the north-eastern corner of Tokyo Bay during several millennia of the Jomon period (Early, Middle and Late Jomon: 7000–3220 cal BP). Jomon hunter-gatherer occupation is characterised by large numbers of settlements, some of them substantial in size, containing hundreds of individual pit-house residential units. Detailed analysis of the rank-size distribution of these settlements reveals a pattern in which periods of settlement clumping, with few large settlements, alternate with more dispersed settlement patterns on a regular cycle of approximately 600 years. The regularity of this cycle might suggest a correlation with cycles of climatic change, such as Bond events. Closer scrutiny shows, however, that such a correlation is unconvincing and suggests that cyclical change in Jomon settlement patterns may instead be due to other factors.

Keywords

JapanTokyo BayJomon period7000–3220 cal BPsettlement changeclustered settlement patternsdispersed settlement patterns
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 338 , December 2013 , pp. 1169 - 1181
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bentley, R.A. 2003. Scale-free network growth and social inequality, in Bentley, R.A. & Maschner, H.D.G. (ed.) Complex systems and archaeology: empirical and theoretical applications:27–42. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Bintliff, J. 1982. Settlement patterns, land tenure and social structure: a diachronic model, in Renfrew, C. & Shennan, S. (ed.) Ranking, resource and exchange:106-11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bleed, P. & Matsui, A.. 2010. Why didn't agriculture develop in Japan? A consideration of Jomon ecological style, niche construction, and the origins of domestication. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17:356-70.Google Scholar
Bond, G., Showers, W., Cheseby, M., Lotti, R., Almasi, P., Demenocal, P., Priore, P., Cullen, H., Hajdas, I. & Bonani, G.. 1997. A pervasive millennial-scale cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and glacial climates. Science 287:1257-66.Google Scholar
Buck, C.E., Litton, C.D. & Smith, A.F.M.. 1992. Calibration of radiocarbon results pertaining to related archaeological events. Journal of Archaeological Science 19:497–512.Google Scholar
Chatters, J.C. & Prentiss, W.C.. 2005. A Darwinian macro-evolutionary perspective on the development of hunter-gatherer systems in northwestern North America. World Archaeology 37:46–65.Google Scholar
Crawford, G.W. 2011. Advances in understanding early agriculture in Japan. Current Anthropology 52: S331–45.Google Scholar
Crema, E.R. 2012. Modelling temporal uncertainty in archaeological analysis. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 19:440-61.Google Scholar
Crema, E.R. 2013. Spatial and temporal models of Jomon settlement. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Crema, E.R. In press. A simulation model of fission-fusion dynamics and long-term settlement change. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D. & Peterson, C.E.. 2004. Comparing archaeological settlement systems with rank-size graphs: a measure of shape and statistical confidence. Journal of Archaeological Science 31:533-49.Google Scholar
Endo, M. 1997. Ainu to shuryo-saishu shakai: shudan no ryudosei ni kansuru chirigakuteki kenkyu [The Ainu as hunter-gatherers: a geographical study of residential mobility]. Tokyo: Taimeido hakko (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Ester, M., Kriegel, H.-P., Sander, J.R. & Xu, X.. 2009. A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise, in Simoudis, E., Han, J. & Fayyad, U.M. (ed.) Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD-96):226-31. Portland (OR): AAAI.Google Scholar
Griffin, A.F. 2011. Emergence of fusion/fission cycling and self-organized criticality from a simulation model of early complex polities. Journal of Archaeological Science 38:873-83.Google Scholar
Habu, J. 2001. Subsistence-settlement systems and intersite variability in the Moroiso phase of the Early Jomon period of Japan. Ann Arbor (MI): International Monographs in Prehistory.Google Scholar
Habu, J. 2008. Growth and decline in complex hunter-gatherer societies: a case study from the Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site, Japan. Antiquity 82:571-84.Google Scholar
Habu, J., Matsui, A., Yamamoto, N. & Kanno, T.. 2011. Shell midden archaeology in Japan: aquatic food acquisition and long-term change in the Jomon culture. Quaternary International 239:19–27.Google Scholar
Imamura, K. 1999. Jomon no jitsuzo wo motomete. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Imamura, K. 2010. Jomon jidai no jinko dotai, in Kosugi, Y., Taniguchi, Y., Nishida, Y., Mizunoe, W. & Yano, K. (ed.) Jomon jidai no kokogaku 1: Jomon bunka no rinkaku:63–73. Tokyo: Doseisha (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Jones, R. 2010. The village and the butterfly: nucleation out of chaos and complexity. Landscapes 11:25–46.Google Scholar
Kaner, S. 2011. The involution of complexity in Jomon Japan, in Cannon, A. (ed.) Structured worlds: the archaeology of hunter-gatherer thought and action:184–204. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Kobayashi, K. 2008. Jomon jidai no rekinendai, in Kosugi, Y., Taniguchi, Y., Nishida, Y., Mizunoe, W. & Yano, K. (ed.) Rekishi no monosashi: Jomon jidai kenkyu no hennen:257-69. Tokyo: Doseisha (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Kudo, Y. 2007. The temporal correspondences between the archaeological chronology and environmental changes from 11,500 to 2,800 cal BP on the Kanto Plain, eastern Japan. The Quaternary Research [Daiyonki-Kenkyu] 46:187-94.Google Scholar
Ortman, S.G., Glowacki, D.M., Varien, M.D. & Johnson, C.D.. 2012. The study area and the ancestral Pueblo occupation, in Kohler, T.A. & Varien, M.D. (ed.) Emergence and collapse of early villages: models of central Mesa Verde archaeology:15–40. London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ouchi, C. 2008. Chiba-ken ni okeru shokibo shuraku no bunseki, in Kobayashi, K. & Kenkyukai, Settlement (ed.) Jomon kenkyū no shin-chihei (zoku): tateana-jukyo shuraku chosa no research:99–106. Tokyo: Rokuichi-shobo (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Parnell, A.C., Haslett, J., Allen, J.R.M., Buck, C.E. & Huntley, B.. 2008. A flexible approach to assessing synchroneity of past events using Bayesian reconstructions of sedimentation history. Quaternary Science Reviews 27:1872-85.Google Scholar
Ratcliffe, J.H. & Mccullagh, M.J.. 1998. Aoristic crime analysis. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 12:751-64.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. & Poston, T.. 1979. Discontinuities in the endogenous change of settlement pattern, in Renfrew, C. & Cooke, K.L. (ed.) Transformations: mathematical approaches to culture change:437-61. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Robert, C.P. & Casella, G.. 2004. Monte Carlo statistical methods. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Roberts, B.K. 1996. Landscapes of settlement: prehistory to the present. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rowley-Conwy, P. 2001. Time, change, and the archaeology of hunter-gatherers: how original is the ‘original affluent society’, in Panter-Brick, C., Layton, R.H. & Rowley-Conwy, P. (ed.) Hunter-gatherer: an interdisciplinary perspective:39–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Savage, S.H. 1997. Assessing departures from log-normality in the rank-size rule. Journal of Archaeological Science 24:233-44.Google Scholar
Suzuki, K. & Suzuki, T. (ed.). 2010. Shuraku no hensen to chiikisei. Tokyo: Yuzankaku (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Taniguchi, Y. 1993. Jomon shuraku no ryoiki. Kikan Kokogaku 44:67–71 (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Taniguchi, Y. 2005. Kanjo-shuraku to Jomon shakai kozo. Tokyo: Gakuseisha (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Toizumi, T. & Nishino, M.. 1999. Jomon koki no miyakogawa-muratagawa ryoiki kaizuka-gun. Chibaken Bunkazai Sentaa Kenkyukiyo 19:151-71 (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Tsude, H. 1995. Archaeological theory in Japan, in Ucko, P.J. (ed.) Theory in archaeology: a world perspective:298–311. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tsumura, H. 2002. Kukan complex no chushutsu to isekikan kankei hyouka no hoho: kokogaku ni okeru kukan bunseki [A methodological approach to the assessment of inter-site conjunction]. Zooarchaeology 18:39–54 (in Japanese).Google Scholar
Tsumura, H. 2006. Site-catchment analysis of prehistoric settlements by reconstructing paleoenvironments with GIS, in Okabe, A. (ed.) GIS-based studies in the humanities and social sciences:175-90. Boca Raton (FL): CRC.Google Scholar
Uchiyama, J. 2006. The environmental troublemaker's burden? Jomon perspectives on foraging land use change, in Grier, C., Kim, J. & Uchiyama, J. (ed.) Beyond affluent foragers: rethinking hunter-gatherer complexity:136-68. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Watanabe, H. 1986. Community habitation and food gathering in prehistoric Japan: an ethnographic interpretation of the archaeological evidence, in Pearson, R.J., Barnes, G.L. & Hutterer, K.L. (ed.) Windows on the Japanese past: studies in archaeology and prehistory:229-54. Ann Arbor: Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Woodburn, J. 1968. Stability and flexibility in Hadza residential groupings, in Lee, R.B. & Devore, I. (ed.) Man the hunter:103-10. Chicago (IL): de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Zipf, G.K. 1949. Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar