Use of Introduced and Native Plants by Early Humans in the Japanese Archipelago

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents recent archaeobotanical findings on the use of plants by early humans in the Japanese archipelago. The first humans arrived in the Japanese archipelago about 38,000 years ago. Although there are not many archaeobotanical records from this period, pine seeds, hazelnuts, and acorns have been found, suggesting that these plants, which were native to the Japanese archipelago, were used as food. As the climate warmed and stabilized around 10,000 years ago, the number of settlements increased, and the evidence of plant use also increased. Gourds, hemp, and lacquer trees found from this period have no wild species in the Japanese archipelago today. It is possible that these plants were brought from the continent as important tools used for containers, fibers, and paints. Wild annual plants such as barnyard millet, soybean, and azuki bean originally grew wild in the Japanese archipelago and are thought to be early weeds that adapted to the open areas (disturbed environment) created by deforestation for settlement, and their usefulness as food was discovered by the Jomon people. Their seed size increased during the middle to late Jomon period (4,500–3,500 years ago), suggesting that domestication may have occurred in the process of using these plants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38605.0