Special Issue of Quaternary International "Bioarchaeology of Northeast Asia"
May 27, 2016
Congratulations to Dr. Angela Lieverse who, along with along with Dr. Hajime Ishida (U of the Ryukyus) and Dr. Hitoshi Fukase (Hokkaido U) has edited a Special Issue of Quaternary International entitled "Bioarchaeology of Northeast Asia".
Congratulations to the authors, most of whom are part of our BHAP team of researchers and graduate students!
The whole volume is now available online, including the editorial by Drs. Lieverse, Ishida, and Fukase. Link to editorial here. Link to download pdf of editorial here.
Bioarchaeology of Northeast Asia edited by Angela R. Lieverse, Hajime Ishida and Hitoshi Fukase. In Quaternary International, Volume 405, Part B, Pages 1-254 (16 June 2016).
The special issue is slated for publication next month. Link to volume with articles 1-23: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10406182/405/part/PB
Excerpt from editorial: This volume of Quaternary International is the third in a series of special issues stemming from the Baikal-Hokkaido Archaeology Project or BHAP (http://bhaparchive.artsrn.ualberta.ca) that, in its current (and third) funding cycle, runs until 2018. The BHAP consists of an international team of multidisciplinary researchers investigating middle Holocene hunter-gatherer cultural dynamics and environmental change among occupants of Siberia's Cis-Baikal (Russian Federation) and Japan's Hokkaido Island. The project is funded largely by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, with additional support coming from other agencies and institutes in Canada, Japan, the Russian Federation, United Kingdom, and Germany. The topic of this special issue, specifically, grew out of a symposium of the same name that was organized for the 78th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Honolulu, HI (April 3-7, 2013).
Bioarchaeology, the analysis of human remains from within their past biological, environmental, and cultural contexts, has played a pivotal role in the BHAP, particularly in the establishment of the project's pioneering "individual life history" approach (e.g., see Zvelebil and Weber, 2013). Recent innovative developments in bone chemistry, ancient DNA, microanatomy, and skeletal morphology, for example, have provided a suite of methods that have enabled us to reconstruct an extraordinary range of information on past individuals' life histories. This, in turn, has helped to shed light on the complex relationships among environmental, cultural, and human biological change.
The significant contribution of bioarchaeology to interpretations of past human life ways is not limited to the spatial and temporal confines of the BHAP, and neither is this volume. Human remains are the most direct link to our past, and bioarchaeology can be credited with much of our current understanding of human adaptation, diversity and transition in antiquity. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Northeast Asia, where cultural complexity and diachronic change are coupled with an abundance of prehistoric human remains spanning much of the last 10,000 years. This special issue of Quaternary International includes bioarchaeological research across Northeast Asia, including Siberia and the Russian Far East, Mongolia, northern China, the Korean Peninsula, and the Japanese Archipelago, and throughout the modern epoch, from the early Holocene through the early historic period(s).
Congratulations to all the authors!