Analytical perspectives on Japanese archaeology

Abstract

Aikens & Higuchi’s Prehistory of Japan (1982) made Japanese archaeology accessible to a wide readership. Japanese data are increasingly incorporated into mainstream analytical works by western archaeologists not directly involved in the area (e.g. Price 1981; Rowley-Conwy 1984; Rouse 1986). The year 1986 marked a further watershed in publishing Japanese archaeology, with Windows on the Japanese past edited by R. Pearson et al. and Prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Japan edited by Akazawa & Aikens. Instead of syntheses or overviews of the country’s cultural (pre-)history, they provide diverse research articles which assume some familiarity with the Japanese sequence and its problems. Both are, nevertheless, specialist publications, offered through university institutions.