Abstract
In this paper, changes in the number of ruins and population during the Jomon Period in Aomori Prefecture are discussed. The number of ruins and pit dwellings were aggregated among periods and areas using the archaeological-site map of Aomori Prefecture posted online. These data were comparison-analyzed with the data from Miyagi Prefecture.
From the incipient Jomon to the late stage of the initial Jomon Period, the number of archae-ological sites in Miyagi and Aomori Prefectures gradually increased in a similar manner. The number of archaeological sites then remained almost flat from the middle stage of the early Jomon to the early stage of the middle Jomon before increasing rapidly in the late stage of the middle Jomon. Due to low temperatures, the number of archaeological sites drastically de-creased in Miyagi Prefecture as well as in the Kanto region during the latter stages of the middle Jomon, and increased in Aomori Prefec-ture because of the dispersion of large villages, into small villages, although it is highly possible that the population did not change to a large extent from the late stage of the middle Jomon to the late stage of the late Jomon, judging from the total floor space of the pit dwellings exca-vated. In the final Jomon Period, the number of archaeological sites slightly increased in Miyagi Prefecture as well as in the Kanto region and decreased in Aomori Prefecture, where archae-ological sites continued to decrease until the Kofun Period.
The Aomori region is generally assumed to have been a prosperous place that gave rise to the Kamegaoka culture, based on studies of re-mains excavated at archaeological sites such as the Kamegaoka site and the Korekawa-Nakai site, but the findings of my research indicate that the settlement and population of the Aomori region were already declining at the time when Kamegaoka culture flourished in the final Jomon.
