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A Dietary Study of the Kamegaoka Culture Population during the Final Jomon Period, Japan, Using Stable Isotope and Lipid Analyses of Ceramic Residues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Akiko Horiuchi ,
Yoshiki Miyata ,
Nobuhiko Kamijo ,
Lucy Cramp  and
Richard P Evershed
Akiko Horiuchi*
Affiliation:
The Graduate School, Division of Natural Sciences, International Christian University, Tokyo 181-8585, Japan
Yoshiki Miyata
Affiliation:
Low Level Radioactivity Laboratory, Institute of Nature and Environmental Technology, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa 923-1224, Japan
Nobuhiko Kamijo
Affiliation:
Archaeology Laboratory, Faculty of Humanity, Hirosaki University, Aomori 036-8560, Japan
Lucy Cramp
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TS, United Kingdom
Richard P Evershed
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TS, United Kingdom
*
2 Corresponding author. Email: horiuchi@icu.ac.jp.
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Abstract

The Jomon culture is an ancient Japanese society that existed during approximately 14,000 to 400 BC and which is characterized by Jomon (cord pattern) pottery. To investigate the paleodiet of the people of northeastern Tohoku in Japan during the Final Jomon period (about 1000–400 BC), we studied three sites in Aomori Prefecture, the center of the Kamegaoka culture. The Fubinashi site is on the coast and was supported by a rich fishing culture. Imazu was a coastal salt-making site. Sugisawa is a mountainous inland site on the banks of a river. We determined the 14C ages of the interior and exterior surfaces of carbonized material on potsherds and compared the data with pottery typology and age to study the marine reservoir effect. We also analyzed the bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes and C:N ratios to determine the presence of aquatic foodstuffs. The organic residues from pottery typology corresponding to the described analyses provided a general perspective of differences in the ancient diets at each site. When we recovered sufficient lipids, we analyzed compound-specific stable isotopes of fatty acids to obtain a multilateral view of those diets. Our findings indicate that the diets of inhabitants of both Fubinashi and Imazu consisted primarily of marine products and some terrestrial foodstuffs, whereas people from Sugisawa processed mainly C3 plants and some terrestrial animals and aquatic commodities.

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Articles
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Radiocarbon , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , 2015 , pp. 721 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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References

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