Tribes, Chiefdoms and early states in late prehistoric Japan

This session presents the results of recent research into the archaeology of chiefdoms and early states in late prehistoric Japan. The time period under consideration spans from ca. 500 B.C. to 600 A.D. During this time period, local societies evolved from tribal-level to chiefdom-level, and eventually from the third to fifth centuries A.D. several regional societies were united to form the central polity at an early-state level. The social and cultural evolution during this time period is characterized by strong regional differentiation in the speed and process of evolution and patterns of interaction with other regions, although the major subsistence base was wet rice agriculture. Moreover, interaction with the Chinese continent and Korean peninsula played the major role in the development of social complexity. In the middle third century, highly standardized keyhole-shaped burial mounds appeared in many regions of Japan, but strong regional differences remained. In this session, we want to emphasize this interplay between autonomous local polities and the central polity in the process toward more complex soiety.