Relationships of Odake 1, a female skull excavated at the Odake shell-mound, Toyama, Japan, with populations of the Middle, Late, and/or Final Jomon periods in the surrounding regions

Abstract

Odake 1, a female skull of the Early Jomon period excavated at the Odake shell-mound, Toyama, Japan, in 2008, was compared with samples of the Middle, Late, and/or Final Jomon periods fromthe Tohoku, Kanto, Tokai, and Sanyo districts of Japan; a Chinese sample of the Bronze Age fromDa-si-kong, An-yang; a pooled sample of the Neolithic-to-Iron Age skeletons from Man Bac, northern Vietnam, and Ban Chiang, northeastern Thailand; and a Late Pleistocene sample from Coobool Creek, southeastern Australia, using typicality probabilities based on 12, 10, 9, and 6 craniofacial measurements. As a result, Odake 1 was found to be closest to the female sample ofthe Middle-to-Final Jomon period from the Tohoku district. Additional similar analyses showedthat the Initial or Early Jomon individual specimen closest to this Tohoku sample was Kitakogane K13, a female skull of the Early Jomon period from Hokkaido, and, further, that Kitakogane K13 was closer to the An-yang Chinese sample of the Bronze Age and Southeast Asian sample of the Neolithic-to-Iron Age than to the Middle-to-Final Jomon sample from the Tohoku district. On the basis of these findings, the process of migration and dispersal of Asians in the times equivalent to the Initial and Early Jomon periods was preliminarily discussed.