Maritime Cultural Landscapes and Seascapes in Prehistoric Japan: The Entangled Sea of the Yayoi Period

Maritime Cultural Landscapes and Seascapes in Prehistoric Japan: The Entangled Sea of the Yayoi Period

The developments in underwater archaeology and heritage in East Asia has gained momentum over the past decades spurred on by the wealth of related material in the archaeological record generating a plethora of new data. Simultaneously, different theoretical frameworks can and should be applied to anchor this data within a broader framework. Therefore, this paper seeks to address archaeological material pertaining to the maritime world of the Yayoi Period as well as several theoretical frameworks within which this material can be interpreted and tied to the underwater cultural heritage of East Asia and how to combine material and theory in a meaningful way. Although the most conspicuous witnesses of maritime connectivity - i.e. shipwrecks - are so far missing from the Yayoi Period, there is sufficient evidence on land that attests to the embeddedness of Japan within the broader maritime world of East Asia. This land-based focus of maritime archaeology is in concordance with the concept of maritime cultural landscape developed by Christer Westerdahl, presented in an eponymous article in 1992 where the terrestrial aspect is always dominant. The concept of seascape, on the other hand, places the focus on the sea itself, an intrinsic part of all maritime studies, and stresses the perceptions of the sea as a cultural entity which possesses agency. Despite valid attempts to put the sea at the center of anthropological and archaeological research, for instance in the Pacific or - more recently - the Mediterranean - there is still an imbalance within the research putting the focus more on the land than on the sea.

Anja Krieger

The Museum of Underwater Archaeology

Krieger, Anja. 2021. “Maritime Cultural Landscapes and Seascapes in Prehistoric Japan: The Entangled Sea of the
Yayoi Period.” Edited by Brian Fahy, Hans Van Tilburg, Bill Jeffery, T. Kurt Knoerl, and Riley Smith. In Proceedings of
Fourth Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage: Keelung,Taiwan, and Virtual, November
1-5, 2021. The Museum of Underwater Archaeology URL: https://apconf-much.org/proceedings/exhibits/show/apconf-muchproceedings/item/673

The Museum of Underwater Archaeology