Congratulations to J. Alyssa White, UMMAA research affiliate, on receiving the prestigious Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. White, who completed her doctorate in archaeology (DPhil) at the University of Oxford in 2024, studies skeletal evidence of violence in the southwestern Japanese archipelago during the end of the Jōmon hunter-gatherer period through the early Yayoi agricultural period (ca. 2500 BC–250 AD). She will use the fellowship to write three articles on her research next year. Below is White's abstract.
Unlike most hunter-gather populations, the Jōmon period is well-known for having little evidence of violence throughout its duration. Conversely, it is argued that within a relatively short time frame, incidences of clear interpersonal violence increased during the early agricultural Yayoi period, resulting in full-scale warfare. Although archaeological indicators of formalized, intergroup conflict, and a possible warrior ideology, only become prominent during the Yayoi period and thereafter, it does not necessarily follow that a true escalation of violence coincided. My research aimed at systemically comparing the persons most at risk of violence and patterns of violence in the southwestern Japanese archipelago in prehistory, from the Late Jōmon through the Yayoi period (ca. 2500 BC – 250 AD). By studying violent skeletal trauma, my project helps to improve the understanding of the transition to agricultural society in Japan through the lens of conflict. Such an approach will greatly benefit debates surrounding the evolution of war and cooperation and the violence in tribal zones by helping to elucidate the role of conflict at the close of a 13,000-year-old warless society. Finally, this study offers greater coverage of Japanese archaeology in the global literature, where it is underrepresented. The results of this work will form the basis of three articles to be completed during the Hunt Fellowship.
