著者

NOBORU ADACHI JUNMEI SAWADA MINORU YONEDA KOICHI KOBAYASHI SHIGERU ITOH

出版者

日本人類学会

雑誌

Anthropological Science (ISSN:09187960)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.121, no.2, pp.137-143, 2013 (Released:2013-08-27)

参考文献数

37

被引用文献数

5 20

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Obtaining genetic information about early humans is indispensable to our understanding of the demographic history of mankind. In the present study, we performed a detailed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of a skeleton of the initial Jomon era unearthed from the Yugura cave site in Nagano, Japan, which was dated to 7920–7795 calBP by direct 14C dating. mtDNA of the Yugura skeleton was designated to haplogroup D4b2, which is widely observed in present-day East Asians, including the Japanese, but is absent in Hokkaido Jomon people. This finding indicates that the basal population of Japan was heterogeneous with respect to their mtDNA lineage. This is the first report on the genotype of the people from the initial phase of the Jomon period.

著者

TAKASHI GAKUHARI HAJIME KOMIYA JUNMEI SAWADA TOMOKO ANEZAKI TAKAO SATO KENICHI KOBAYASHI SHIGERU ITOH KOICHI KOBAYASHI HIROYUKI MATSUZAKI KUNIO YOSHIDA MINORU YONEDA

出版者

日本人類学会

雑誌

Anthropological Science (ISSN:09187960)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.150309, (Released:2015-06-11)

被引用文献数

3 10

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Two complete dog skeletons were recovered during archeological excavations from 1961 to 1970 at the Kamikuroiwa rock shelter, a site that yielded a series of cultural entities from the Late Pleistocene, Incipient Jomon, and Early Jomon periods. Since two dogs were buried close to human skeletons, it was thought that these dogs had been buried by Jomon people, and hence provided the oldest direct evidence of Canis domestication in Japan. However, the stratigraphic information and archeological contexts of these dog skeletons are incomplete due to the lack of detailed excavation reports and technical limitations of excavations at this site. Because the date of the dog burials has not been fully discussed in the context of modern chronology or recent discussions on Canis domestication, we directly measured radiocarbon ages and stable isotope analysis on two dog burials and one set of human remains from the Kamikuroiwa rock shelter. These data are important for reconstructing the relationship between humans and dogs in the Jomon period. Our results show that the human thought to have been buried with the dogs was assigned to the middle Initial Jomon period (8977–8725 calBP), whereas, on the other hand, dates for the dog burials are very close to each other and were assigned to the latest Initial Jomon or the initial Early Jomon periods (7414–7273 calBP). Although these results are not consistent with previous archeological interpretations for this site, they remain important because these two dog burials are among the oldest evidence of Canis domestication in East Asia.

著者

TOMOHITO NAGAOKA AKIO SHIZUSHIMA JUNMEI SAWADA SOICHIRO TOMO KEIGO HOSHINO HANAKO SATO KAZUAKI HIRATA

出版者

The Anthropological Society of Nippon

雑誌

Anthropological Science (ISSN:09187960)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.116, no.2, pp.105-113, 2008 (Released:2008-08-27)

参考文献数

30

被引用文献数

27 33

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The purpose of this study was to develop new standards for determining the sex of fragmentary human skeletal remains. We measured height, width, and length of the mastoid process in medieval to early modern Japanese skeletons, from the Yuigahama-minami and Hitotsubashi sites, in order to provide a metric standard for the diagnosis of sex using the mastoid process. We calculated discriminant functions based on these measurements; the accuracy of sex classification was over 80% using a single variable, and reached 82–92% with two variables, mastoid height and width. This accuracy is equal to or better than that reported by some previous studies of sex determination using the cranium. However, when we examined intra- and interobserver errors in the mastoid process measurements, we found a high level of errors, and this highlights the difficulty involved in intraobserver repeatability and interobserver reproducibility. Our results imply that, in order to achieve reliable results of sex determination using the mastoid process, the measurement methods need to be carefully determined and executed.

著者

TOMOHITO NAGAOKA JUNMEI SAWADA KAZUAKI HIRATA

出版者

日本人類学会

雑誌

Anthropological Science (ISSN:09187960)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.116, no.2, pp.161-169, 2008 (Released:2008-08-27)

参考文献数

58

被引用文献数

9 15

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The demography of the Jomon people was first systematically investigated by Kobayashi ([1967] Journal of the Faculty of Science, The University of Tokyo, Section V, 3: 107–162). His life-table analysis indicated that Jomon life expectancy at the age of 15 was only 16 years. However, recent advances in palaeodemography have questioned whether the reconstruction of demographic parameters from skeletons actually reflects the real mortality patterns of past populations. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that palaeodemographic data from skeletal remains represent an appropriate adult mortality profile. If the hypothesis is the case, the mortality profile of the Jomon people implied the heavy work-load resulting in the unusually high mortality schedule. If it is not the case, on the other hand, Kobayashi’s data had been distorted by the errors of adult age-at-death estimation. This study examined well-preserved auricular surfaces of 86 individuals, which are individuals aged 15 years and above. Age estimation of the auricular surfaces was performed using two techniques: the original method of Lovejoy et al. ([1985] American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 68: 15–28) and the revised method of Buckberry and Chamberlain ([2002] American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 119: 231–239). The results indicate important findings on the mortality profile of the Jomon people. First, the revised estimation has older age distributions, with the majority of individuals over 65 years of age. Second, the revised estimation increases the life expectancy at the age of 15 from 16 years to 32 years. The present data lead to the conclusions that the revised method improves the accuracy of age estimation for elderly adults, and that the Kobayashi’s estimation does not represent the real mortality profile. These findings will have great effects on the life history reconstruction of the Jomon people.