著者

TAKUMI TSUTAYA MINORU YONEDA MIKIKO ABE TOMOHITO NAGAOKA

出版者

日本人類学会

雑誌

Anthropological Science (ISSN:09187960)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.190403, (Released:2019-06-21)

被引用文献数

3

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The reconstruction of everyday diets in villages is important for understanding the diversity of diets and commerce networks of food items in premodern Japan. However, premodern diets in villages have not been well studied compared with those in cities. In this study, stable isotope analyses were performed on 23 adult human skeletons excavated from Sendaiji, a mountainous woodland village of underground Christians in Osaka in premodern Japan. No significant isotopic differences was found between individuals identified as Buddhists and those identified as Christians or between females and males. The total mean carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotope ratios were –21.1 ± 0.4‰, 11.6 ± 1.0‰, and 8.9 ± 1.3‰, respectively. The carbon isotope ratios in Sendaiji were the lowest among the studied premodern populations probably because these individuals consumed woodland foods that are affected by the canopy effect. No significant correlation between sulfur and nitrogen isotope ratios was apparent, suggesting that there was little contribution from marine foods or marine fertilizers to the diet of individuals in premodern Sendaiji. The relatively high nitrogen isotope ratios in Sendaiji were possibly because of the denitrification in paddy rice fields, ammonium uptake by paddy rice, use of animal fertilizers, and/or consumption of freshwater fish. To our knowledge, this is the first detailed bioarchaeological study of the premodern diet in a mountainous village in western Japan.

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.