Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ENCOUNTER (Demography, Cultural change, and the Diffusion of Rice and Millet during the Jomon-Yayoi transition in prehistoric Japan)
Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-09-30
Human history is punctuated by episodes of large-scale diffusion of new ideas and people that have often led to era-defining transitions of past societies. Investigating what processes have determined these events, how people have reacted to these, and what long-term consequences they had is a key for understanding the fundamental drivers of cultural and societal changes. The ENCOUNTER project pushes this agenda forward by investigating the timing and the mode of the dispersal of rice and millet farming in the Japanese archipelago during the 3rd millennium BP. This is a pivotal moment in Japanese prehistory that marks the transition between the so-called Jomon and Yayoi periods, and its ultimate consequences are still detectable in the genetic, linguistic, and cultural variation of present-day Japan. The event was triggered when migrant groups from the Korean peninsula brought a package of novel cultural traits that spread, via demic and cultural diffusion, in different parts of the Japanese islands. At the time, the archipelago was occupied by an incumbent population (known as Jomon) predominantly based on hunting, fishing, and gathering economies. Jomon communities, however, responded differently to the new cultural and economic traits from mainland Asia. Some regions adopted the entire cultural package almost immediately, while in other instances the archaeological record suggests episodes of hybridisation, selective adoption of traits, resistance, and even reversion. In other words, the Jomon/Yayoi transition was a profoundly heterogeneous process. The overall aim of the ENCOUNTER project is to identify and explain such variation by synthesising the rich but unstructured archaeological record in Japan. It will seek to determine the extent by which such variation can be explained by environmental conditions (e.g. suitability to rice and millet farming), cultural connectivity, and demographic processes, and explore the subsequent pathways undertaken by different regions to the origins of early states. In pursuing this endeavour, the ENCOUNTER project provides an exceptional case study for studying the topical theme of the relationship between migration and cultural change, offering a deep-time perspective on a phenomenon that has long, and still does characterise pivotal moments of human history.
The first 30 months have been dedicated to the collection, digitisation, and synthesis of the archaeological data from site excavation reports and to the development and application of new quantitative and computational methods to analyse such data.
Work Package 1 (Demography) has collated over 35,000 radiocarbon dates from the entire archipelago and nearly 4,000 residential data from selected case studies to reconstruct regional variations in the demographic response to rice and millet farming. The work package has made substantial contributions from a methodological standpoint, which led to the publication of four research outputs and two open-source software packages. These new statistical tools have been applied to answer two demographic questions, one pertaining an episode of population boom and bust in central Japan prior to the arrival of farming (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105136) and the other centered on the evaluation of the timing and the magnitude of the demographic transition following the introduction of wet-rice agriculture in SW Japan (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251695; fig. 2). The WP has also explored, via simulation, potential caveats and challenges for demographic inference based on archaeological data https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0726).
Work Package 2 (Subsistence and Food Technology) has so far collected nearly 400 ceramic samples from 12 sites spanning a temporal interval between the end of the Jomon and the Yayoi period. Sample preparation have been completed for a subset of this data, and preliminary results from the Asahi site in central Japan are providing insights on the food resources cooked in these pots (fig. 3)
Work Package 4 (Environment) is currently examining the productivity of rice and millets by using 19th century historical yield records, paleo-climate data, and computational models. Preliminary results, based on thermal niche models (fig. 4), have shown geographic and temporal variation in the suitability of for growing rice, revealing key insights on the abandonment of paddy field agriculture in northern Japan towards the second half of the Yayoi period.
Work Package 3 (Material Culture), Work Package 5 (Spread of Rice and Millets), & Work Package 6 (Integration and Synthesis) are in their initial stages due to the recent appointment of key PDRAs. WP3 has been focusing on text-mining from excavation reports to extract key cultural variables for subsequent spatial dissimilarity analyses, whilst WP5 have collated nearly 400 radiocarbon dates from charred remains of rice, and has carried out preliminary analyses on the regional variations in its rate of dispersal.
Work Package 1 (Demography) has collated over 35,000 radiocarbon dates from the entire archipelago and nearly 4,000 residential data from selected case studies to reconstruct regional variations in the demographic response to rice and millet farming. The work package has made substantial contributions from a methodological standpoint, which led to the publication of four research outputs and two open-source software packages. These new statistical tools have been applied to answer two demographic questions, one pertaining an episode of population boom and bust in central Japan prior to the arrival of farming (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105136) and the other centered on the evaluation of the timing and the magnitude of the demographic transition following the introduction of wet-rice agriculture in SW Japan (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251695; fig. 2). The WP has also explored, via simulation, potential caveats and challenges for demographic inference based on archaeological data https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0726).
Work Package 2 (Subsistence and Food Technology) has so far collected nearly 400 ceramic samples from 12 sites spanning a temporal interval between the end of the Jomon and the Yayoi period. Sample preparation have been completed for a subset of this data, and preliminary results from the Asahi site in central Japan are providing insights on the food resources cooked in these pots (fig. 3)
Work Package 4 (Environment) is currently examining the productivity of rice and millets by using 19th century historical yield records, paleo-climate data, and computational models. Preliminary results, based on thermal niche models (fig. 4), have shown geographic and temporal variation in the suitability of for growing rice, revealing key insights on the abandonment of paddy field agriculture in northern Japan towards the second half of the Yayoi period.
Work Package 3 (Material Culture), Work Package 5 (Spread of Rice and Millets), & Work Package 6 (Integration and Synthesis) are in their initial stages due to the recent appointment of key PDRAs. WP3 has been focusing on text-mining from excavation reports to extract key cultural variables for subsequent spatial dissimilarity analyses, whilst WP5 have collated nearly 400 radiocarbon dates from charred remains of rice, and has carried out preliminary analyses on the regional variations in its rate of dispersal.
The primary goal of the ENCOUNTER project is to investigate how incumbent populations responded to the introduction of new cultural elements brought in by migrant groups. Studies on hunter-gathering to farming transition have traditionally focused less on the dynamics of cultural adoption of incumbent populations, and neglected how different pathways such as resistance, hybridisation, and reversion after an initial adoption emerge. By examining these different dynamics within the confines of the Japanese archipelago, the project will provide new insights from one of the richest archaeological records available globally, contributing both to the understanding of a defining moment in Japanese history and more generally to the relationship between migration and cultural change. ENCOUNTER is introducing an array of significant methodological advances, including new molecular techniques to identify specific taxa, and statistical approaches to infer past population dynamics, model the tempo and the mode of dispersal dynamics, track the evolution of cultural boundaries and reconstruct the productivity of different crops. The relevance of many of these advances are beyond the remits of the contextual goals of the project, and ENCOUNTER will facilitate the application of these new methods by making all research fully reproducible and where possible, develop software packages to promote reuse.