Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/90149

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/bfhhs.170.l59

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the author proposed a hypothesis regarding the social change that enabled to introduce the paddy rice farming in Northeastern Honshu Island in the Early Yayoi Culture. It highlighted the intensification of the labor force by the integration of households and settlements between the Final Jomon and the Middle Yayoi. However, the precise timing of the beginning of agriculture was not determined at that time, meaning that it might date back to the Jomon. Moreover, the occurrence date of large settlements consisting solely of large-size dwellings was also poorly understood. However, novel techniques have revealed these issues in the last fifteen years. The replication method, a paleoethnobotanical technique to detect prehistoric plant seeds, has demonstrated that paddy rice farming was introduced in the Early Yayoi, and it did not go back to the Jomon. Moreover, high-accuracy radiocarbon dating using accelerator mass spectrometry suggests that large settlements occurred before the introduction of rice farming in this region, indicating that there is no close relationship between the enlargement of settlements and agriculture. This study provides a new perspective on the temporal gap between the enlargement of settlement and the beginning of agriculture. As a result of examinations of large-size dwellings, we clarified that the integration of households and settlements occurred in the late Final Jomon as a social solution to maintain the handicraft industry, one of the core economies to produce ritual goods, during a period of population decline, a decrease of food resources, and climate cooling as suggested by various archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence. Also, this study proposed a hypothesis that part of the people in large settlements began small-scale rice farming as a trial in the Early Yayoi so that they maintained handicraft production by living in a settlement together because agriculture had the advantage of securing food near their occupation area as compared to hunting and gathering during a resource depletion period. In conclusion, paddy rice farming was just a means to maintain handicrafts when they experimentally introduced it in the Early Yayoi, and then, it became a main subsistence in the Middle Yayoi after they recognized its usefulness. This is the first comprehensive theory that elucidates not only the social implication of large-size dwellings during the Final Jomon but also why there are differences in the scale of agriculture and site distribution between the Early and Middle Yayoi.