Forging the Landscape

Between the 3rd and 7th centuries, social and political organization in the Japanese archipelago underwent immense transformations, from numerous small polities with varying levels of social stratification to a territorial state with a capital city based on a Chinese model. For much of this time, iron was a scarce material that had to be imported from overseas. Control over the production and distribution of iron objects, especially in the form of prestige goods, was a key aspect of the political economy underpinning relations between central authorities and distant regional elites. Alongside these developments, natural and anthropogenic processes alike reshaped the Osaka plain, where large-scale ironworking at the Ōgata archaeological site supported elite consumption. Based on new analyses of excavated ironworking waste products, this talk examines how specialist ironworkers at Ōgata managed forest resources amid landscape change and competing demand from other crafts and communities. Fuel choices demonstrate a persistent concern for sharing wood resources, but the apparent introduction of fuel-conserving practices and opening of new tracts of old forest to exploitation indicate that early management efforts were insufficient. These analyses provide a window into the activities and agency of non-elites in both shaping and adapting to a landscape otherwise dominated by elite prerogative.

J. Scott Lyons is an anthropological archaeologist focused on historical ecology and archaeometallurgy in Japan. His dissertation combined a new synthesis of legacy paleoenvironmental data with archaeometallurgical analyses to recover landscape management practices embedded in ironworking technology at the fifth- and sixth-century ironworking site of Ōgata in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. Scott completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2022, and previously received an A.B. in Japanese and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis, and an M.A. in Archaeology from Kyoto University. Prior to coming to Yale, he was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at Kyushu University where he began ethnoarchaeological research in collaboration with traditional ironworkers.