Japan’s New Paleoclimate: Prospects for Protohistory
Author(s): Scott Lyons
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
<html>
Based on pollen data from Ozegahara, archaeologists have long understood Japan’s protohistoric Kofun period as colder and wetter than the previous Yayoi period and subsequent Asuka and Nara historic periods. Though it is not yet widely incorporated into synthetic research on the period, recent higher resolution data is beginning to overturn this paradigm, suggesting instead that with some exceptional periods, much of the Kofun period was climatically similar to the Japanese archipelago in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. The broad climatic similarity between the Kofun period and the 20<sup>th</sup> century permits archaeologists to make reasonable assumptions about Kofun-period ecological processes based on the voluminous ecological and agricultural research conducted in Japan during the 20<sup>th</sup> century. As a source of proxy information for the Kofun period, 20<sup>th</sup> century ecology offers detailed images of Japanese landscapes and processes that can be applied to support or undermine hypothetical connections between climate and political developments, and presents new opportunities for archaeologies of human-environmental interaction in this period. Estimates of forest regeneration and sustainable wood harvesting on the Osaka plain in relation to ironworking fuel consumption illustrate the potential for new research directions.
</html>
Cite this Record
Japan’s New Paleoclimate: Prospects for Protohistory. Scott Lyons. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 511324)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 53927