Abstract
There has been much discussion about regional diversity in the subsistence economies of Japanese prehistoric hunter-gatherers during the Jomon period. The discussion has focused on the meaning of regional difference in such archaeological evidence as artifact, faunal and floral assembrages. In this study, however, human bones are the major topic. Carbon isotopic analysis of the human skeletal materials from three Jomon shellmidden sites and from northern Ainu populations in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, spanning the time period 4000BP to the present, indicates area-specific dietary specialization. The Hokkaido and Sakhalin aboriginal people developed a marine-oriented subsistence base, while more emphasis on terrestrial food chains was found in the Jomon period samples.
