Research interests: Environment and landscape, resilience and sustainability, GIS analysis, state formation processes, and disaster archaeology in Japan’s Kofun period
研究対象：環境とランドスケープ、持続可能とレジリエンス、地理情報システム（GIS）、国家形成プロセス、自然災害考古学、日本の古墳時代。
The Berkeley Sannai Maruyama Project
From Summer 1997 to Summer 2007, Junko Habu and her students collected soil samples from multiple test excavation areas of the Sannai Maruyama site. Archival research of excavation report of Jomon sites in Aomori Prefecture was also conducted. These works were done in collaboration with the Preservation Office of the Sannai Maruyama Site.
Together with two Berkeley graduate students and one undergraduate apprentice, I conducted field and laboratory research in Japan in summer 2020 1) to analyze floral remains obtained from the Middle Jomon Goshono site, Ichinohe Town, Iwate Prefecture, and 2) to process additional soil samples for further analysis. At the laboratory of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, we floated soil samples that were previously collected from several pit-dwellings within the site, and sorted both the light and heavy fractions with a guidance from Dr. Yumiko Ito of Aomori Prefecture.
Excavated sporadically for over thirty years, Ōgata in Kashiwara City and Mori in Katano City are the largest-scale Kofun Period ironworking sites in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. Large numbers of forging slags have been unearthed from both sites, which alongside partially preserved hearth features, provide the bulk of evidence for ironworking. Following methods developed by French archaeometallurgists, novel analyses of these forge slags correlate different slag materials with different forging activities.
Research Description: My research focuses on hunter-gatherer societies in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, with the aim of reconstructing human-environment interactions during the Late Pleistocene.
Archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers and small-scale societies; human-environmental dynamics; sedentism; landscape archaeology; sociopolitics of archaeology; climate change; local and global environmental issues; Japan, East Asia and the North Pacific Rim.
