Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• An introduction to Japan's natural environment
• The periodization of Japanese archaeology
• Palaeolithic research on the volcanic islands
• Earliest pottery and the dates controversy
• Establishment of the Jomon economic system and stable settlements
• Marine transgression and fishing
• Pit-traps and Jomon hunting
• Plant foods and the Middle Jomon culture
• Questions in the late final Jomon period
• The arrival of agriculture
• Racial questions of Jomon and Yayoi peoples
• Immigrant settlements and overseas trade
• Iron and bronze
• Political unification
• Two later prehistories in the north and south
• The prehistory of Japan and its position in East Asia

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Although the title suggests a generalized textbook on Japanese prehistory, the author is unabashedly selective in his chronological focus and theoretical views. Most of the book is devoted to the Jomon foragers, c. 10,000-300 BCE, sandwiched by brief discussions of the earlier Paleolithic period and later Yayoi chiefdoms. The controversy over mainland Asian influences on the Jomon-Yayoi transition is presented with a clear bias toward indigenous forces of cultural evolution, but Imamura provides such a richly detailed discussion of the archaeological data that readers can readily evaluate alternative scenarios. Whether or not one agrees with Imamura's theoretical perspective and selection of topics and sources, this book makes a major contribution to research and teaching on the archaeology of East Asia. It synthesizes hundreds of Japanese publications and archaeological research projects largely unknown to non-Japanese speakers and generally omitted from texts by foreigners. Imamura's comments about the historical development of Japanese archaeology in the preface and throughout the text also help non-Japanese scholars better understand why Japanese methodologies, research aims, and concepts of "theory" differ so dramatically from that of their foreign colleagues. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. L. L. Junker; Vanderbilt University