Morisaki Kazuki, Iizuka Fumie, Izuho Masami, Aldenderfer Mark
Department of Archaeology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 27;20(1):e0314311. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314311. eCollection 2025.
Sedentism is an adaptive alternative in human societies which is often associated with the emergence of complex societies in the Holocene. To elucidate the factors and processes of the emergence of sedentary societies, continuous accumulation of case studies based on robust evidence from across the world is required. Given abundant archaeological and geological evidence from the late Pleistocene to early Holocene, Tanegashima Island, situated in the southern Japanese Archipelago of the northwestern Pacific Rim, has significant potential to unravel factors and processes of sedentism. Our study evaluates long-term change in hunter-gatherer mobility on Tanegashima Island from the Upper Paleolithic to Incipient Jomon (ca.36,000-12,800 cal BP). Based on Bayesian age modelling, we performed diachronic analyses on lithic toolkit structure, lithic reduction technology, lithic raw material composition, and occupation intensity. The results illustrate that settlement-subsistence strategies on Tanegashima primarily correspond to the change in environmental conditions, mainly food resources, and foragers increased their degrees of sedentism when abundant forest existed. More important is that highly stable sedentism, which is not observed until the Incipient Jomon, depends not only on such a productive environment, but also on the increase in population size. High occupation intensity during the Incipient Jomon on the island is likely attributed to an influx of people from Kyushu proper. Although the relationship between cause and effect of these factors is still to be clarified in future work, our study provides insights on the fundamental causes of sedentism in the temperate forest of the late Pleistocene.
定居生活是人类社会中的一种适应性选择，通常与全新世复杂社会的出现相关联。为了阐明定居社会出现的因素和过程，需要基于来自世界各地的有力证据持续积累案例研究。鉴于从晚更新世到全新世早期有丰富的考古和地质证据，位于西北太平洋沿岸日本群岛南部的种子岛，在揭示定居生活的因素和过程方面具有巨大潜力。我们的研究评估了从旧石器时代晚期到绳纹时代初期（约公元前36,000 - 12,800年）种子岛狩猎采集者流动性的长期变化。基于贝叶斯年龄建模，我们对石器工具包结构、石器制作技术、石器原材料组成和居住强度进行了历时分析。结果表明，种子岛的定居 - 生存策略主要与环境条件的变化相对应，主要是食物资源，当有丰富森林存在时，觅食者的定居程度增加。更重要的是，直到绳纹时代初期才出现的高度稳定的定居生活，不仅取决于这样一个高产的环境，还取决于人口规模的增加。该岛绳纹时代初期的高居住强度可能归因于来自九州本土的人口涌入。尽管这些因素的因果关系在未来的研究中仍有待阐明，但我们的研究为晚更新世温带森林中定居生活的根本原因提供了见解。
