Correction to: ‘Violence in the prehistoric period of Japan: the spatio-temporal pattern of skeletal evidence for violence in the Jomon period’

Whether man is predisposed to lethal violence, ranging from homicide to warfare, and how that may have impacted human evolution, are among the most controversial topics of debate on human evolution. Although recent studies on the evolution of warfare have been based on various archaeological and ethnographic data, they have reported mixed results: it is unclear whether or notwarfare among prehistoric hunter–gathererswas common enough to be a component of human nature and a selective pressure for the evolution of human behaviour. This paper reports the mortality attributable to violence, and the spatio-temporal pattern of violence thus shown among ancient hunter–gatherers using skeletal evidence in prehistoric Japan (the Jomon period: 13 000 cal BC–800 cal BC). Our results suggest that the mortality due to violence was low and spatio-temporally highly restricted in the Jomon period, which implies that violence including warfare in prehistoric Japan was not common

Violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan

The origins and consequences of warfare or largescale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two different evolutionary models, i.e., parochial altruism model and subsistence model. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism and the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable

First and second excavation report of Iwabushi site in Tottori prefecture

主な遺跡は縄文時代早期押型文土器、縄文時代後期の土器・石器。縄文早期の地表面を確認、黒ボク層中で土器集中部を検出

日本列島の先史時代における異文化接触と文化の生成：学際的共同研究に向けて

文化共生学の実践的研究の一環として、日本列島の先史時代における異文化接触と文化の生成をテーマにした考古学・人類学・社会学・社会心理学による共同研究を計画している。このプロジェクトは緒についたばかりであり、具体的な成果を出すにはまだ時間がかかると思われるが、本稿では、この研究テーマの概要と意義、とくに学際的な共同研究が必要である理由について述べ、今後の研究の方向性を示すことにしたい