The Archaeology of Japan

This is the first book-length study of the Yayoi and Kofun periods of Japan (c. 600 BC - 700 AD), in which the introduction of rice paddy-field farming from the Korean peninsula ignited the rapid development of social complexity and hierarchy that culminated with the formation of the ancient Japanese state. The author traces the historical trajectory of the Yayoi and Kofun periods by employing cutting-edge sociological, anthropological, and archaeological theories and methods. The book reveals a fascinating process through which sophisticated hunting-gathering communities in an archipelago on the eastern fringe of the Eurasian continent were transformed materially and symbolically into a state.

Author: Koji Mizoguchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/25/2013
Pages: 392
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.75lbs
Size: 11.10h x 8.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780521884907

About the Author
Mizoguchi, Koji: - Koji Mizoguchi is Professor of Social Archaeology at the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Japan. He is the author of An Archaeological History of Japan: 30,000 BC to AD 700 (2002) and Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan (Cambridge, 2006). Dr Mizoguchi is regarded as a leading Japanese archaeologist, particularly in the study of the Yayoi period and mortuary archaeology. His many contributions to scholarly journals focus on the postcolonial archaeologies of East Asia with special emphasis on Japan, the relationship between modernisation and the disciplinisation of archaeology, and the study of the centralisation and hierarchisation of social relations by using formal network analysis methods.