Abstract
The Minatogawa Fissure site on Okinawa Island is known from its Late Pleistocene human fossils represented by four partial skeletons. Radiocarbon dates of 18250 ± 650 BP and 16600 ± 300 BP have been reported on associated charcoal, but interpretations of the age of the fossils have been clouded from a paucity of published contextual data. We therefore set out to critically examine all information available to us, with the aim to unambiguously clarify the chronological status of the Minatogawa fossils. Up to 57 information cards accompany the fossil assemblage, with excavation grid, date, and bone part data. The details of this information are highly congruent with several other sources, Seiho Oyama’s personal memoir and excavation charts, Naotune Watanabe’s brief reports, and the inscriptions on the fossil bones themselves. We conclude that the following reliable inferences can be made. Most parts of the Minatogawa II, III, and IV individuals were collected/excavated between August 21 to 23, 1970, during N. Watanabe’s presence at the site, predominantly from grids A2/A3 to C4. The Minatogawa I individual was discovered by S. Oyama, between September and November, 1970, from grids C5/6 to D6 lower in the fissure site. The dated charcoal samples were recovered in the clay layer that contained individuals II, III, and IV and abundant wild boar remains. During our investigation, we also newly identified a few human fossil bones in the 1968/69 Minatogawa Fissure and Yamashita-cho Cave I collections. We present here an updated listing of these and the 1970 Minatogawa human fossil collections.
