CULTURAL SEQUENCES IN HOKKAIDO MacCORD 503 



The stemmed arrowpoint illustrated in plate ISe is identical to 

 many found in America, and Japanese archeologists refer to it as the 

 "American Indian type." Such stemmed points of flint are more 

 frequent in collections of stone implements from Sakhalin than from 

 Hokkaido, and they are almost never seen in Honshu collections. This 

 distributional pattern indicates a probable dispersion from a source 

 common both to America and Japan -probably northeastern Siberia. 

 This problem must await further search on the mainland before it can 

 be solved. 



The identity of the people responsible for the Jomon Period materials 

 and for the pro to historic Tanaka Site materials remains problematical 

 at this time. I suspect that the people were of the same racial stock 

 as the modern Japanese, but I cannot now prove this assumption. 



The role of the modern Ainu and his ancestors in this archeological 

 picture is also still too obscure for any positive statement. The Ainu 

 graves at Ebetsu and Hiroshima and those adjoining the Tanaka Site 

 reportedly have yielded intact skeletal material and grave goods of 

 such recency that they can with certainty be dated within the past 

 century or so. 



During my explorations on Hokkaido 1 saw no archeological site 

 that 1 could with certainty identify with prehistoric Ainu. Possibly 

 the culture of the Ainu in early times was such that nothing but stone 

 implements could survive. If so, this fact would account for the non- 

 ceramic sites on Hokkaido. We must, however, await more thorough 

 stratigraphies! explorations of the shell mounds, caves, and other sites 

 on Hokkaido for answers to this puzzling problem. 



Literature Cited 



Groot, Father Gerard 



l'.tol. The prehistory of Japan, Columbia University Press, New York, 

 xvii+122 pp. 

 MacCord, Howard A. 



1955. Contributions to the archeology of northern Honshu, Part II, Oga- 

 wara pit-house culture. American Antiquity, Salt Lake City. 

 vol 21, No. 2, pp 1-49-1)1. 

 Rubin, Meyer; and Alexander, Corinne 



!'.».")S. U.S. Geological Survey Radiocarbon Dates, IV. Science, vol 127, 

 Xo. 3313, pj) L476 1 187. 



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