The Formation of the Ainu Cultural Landscape: Landscape Shift in a Hunter-Gatherer Society in the Northern Part of the Japanese Archipelago

Abstract

Ainu history includes a dramatic socio-cultural transition, reflected in landscape formation, between the Epi-Jomon (third century BC–seventh century AD) and the Satsumon period (seventh–thirteenth centuries AD). This article examines the nature of this landscape shift, revealing, between the Epi-Jomon and the Satsumon, a variety of profound changes in the ways in which land and bio-resources were used for subsistence activities, even though natural and physical environmental cycles underwent no fundamental transformation during this time. These results lead us to conclude that the Ainu landscape—as the product of a system of ecological and socio-cultural adaptation, described in the historical and ethnographic eras—was established in the Satsumon period. This landscape shift is illustrated by a case study of a hunter-gatherer society directly influenced by the market economy and political systems of outside societies and nations during East Asia’s medieval stage, before completing its spontaneous process of ‘Neolithizaiton’.