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This is an extended review of a recent book, Ancient Jomon of Japan, by Junko Habu. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004. ISBN 0-521-77213-3 (cloth), 0521-77670-8 (paper). xv + 332 pp. £50 (cloth) or £19.99 (paper). Junko Habu, who is an Associate Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is a very rare Japanese archaeologist in two respects: she is one of the few female Japanese professional archaeologists and is one of the even fewer Japanese archaeologists who researches and teaches Japanese archaeology outside of Japan. I admire her endeavors and her success in securing a faculty position at an American university. With this background, it is not surprising that Habu has made it one of her missions to bridge the gap between Japanese and Anglo-American archaeologies. Ancient Jomon of Japan is the first book in the English language that focuses solely on Jomon culture. As a matter of course, this book contains more new information on the Jomon than any of the introductory books on Japanese archaeology written in English. The huge settlement site at Sannai Maruyama and the extraordinarily large shell midden at Nakazato could not be covered comprehensively when I wrote a book in English on Japanese prehistory ten years ago (Imamura, 1996). In this review, I will concentrate on the distinctive aspects of Habu’s book, skipping discussion of the conventional topics normally written about in Japanese books. The distinctive aspects covered in this book include the chapters in which Habu presents her original reconstruction of Jomon society based on Anglo-American theories, particularly in relation to the hunter-gatherer models created by Lewis Binford. These chapters make this book a rarity in Japanese archaeology, with the exception of an earlier monograph written by Habu (2001) herself, and Habu’s arguments are important in delineating new hypotheses in Jomon research. Ancient Jomon of Japan, if likened to a culinary dish, cooks Japanese archaeological material in an Anglo-American manner to serve to Anglo-Americans. If this book proves to be popular with the latter readers, it may be because Habu’s method suits their tastes. Any critical review of this book must consider Habu’s approach and take into account the differences and exchanges between the two archaeological spheres. The concepts and theories concerning hunter-gatherers developed by Binford and others, which are used repeatedly by Habu, were originally derived from cases of modern hunter-gatherers for synchronic explanations. However, Habu declares that they are also applicable to diachronic explanations for long-term changes and can actually be applied to the Jomon period, which occurred in a very distant time and in a quite different environment from those of the original cases. Although this extrapolation is crucial and fundamental, Habu expands the applicable sphere of the theory without sufficient explanation. Since theories of human behavior, which is extremely diversified, are not equivalent to theories of mathematics or chemistry, the limits of applicability of such theories are open to question and require careful consideration and clarification. Habu seems to assume that the previously developed hunter-gatherer theories, which she uses, are applicable to all types of hunter-gatherer. However, the original theories were derived for modern hunter-gatherers, who were excluded from fertile lands by farmers or who adapted to barren lands in special ways. So, are these theories applicable to all hunter-gatherers who ever existed on earth? In this respect, archaeologists are divided into two camps: those that believe that the hunter-gatherer theory can be applied to all cases and those who wish to see this applicability tested for each particular case. Most Japanese archaeologists belong to the second group, and for me it was really surprising to note how Habu inappropriately applies Binford’s models to many Jomon cases with the simple qualification that, “I find [the models’] applicability surprisingly wide” (p. 12). What is the definition of hunter-gatherers? Habu consistently refers to the Jomon people as hunter-gatherers, in spite of substantial evidence that the Jomon people were beyond the range of normal hunter-gatherers in the latter half of the period. Although Habu remarks that new models will be needed if it is demonstrated that plant cultivation was important during certain parts of the Jomon period, she does not expand upon this topic. The reason for this lapse is clear: if the Jomon were not hunter-gatherers, theories related to hunter-gatherers would not be applicable and research involving the application of these theories would not be valid. It goes without saying that the methods employed in scientific research are diverse and that individuals are free to * Corresponding author. e-mail: imamura@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp phone: +81-3-5841-3794; fax: +81-3-5841-3794

Archaeological theory and Japanese methodology in Jomon research: a review of Junko Habu’s “Ancient Jomon of Japan”