The bioarchaeology of a Japanese population from the Nozoji-ato site in Kamakura City, Japan

Abstract

The Japanese medieval period encompassed almost 400 years, between 1185 and 1573 AD. Previous research of human skeletal remains from medieval Kamakura City has shown that medieval people had a poor level of health and general living conditions because of malnutrition and interpersonal violence. The aims of this study are to apply bioarchaelogical analyses to a new series of human skeletal remains from the Nozoji-ato site in Kamakura City and to test the hypothesis that the bioarchaeological features that characterize medieval Japanese people are commonly seen in the new skeletal series. The Nozoji-ato site has been dated to a chronological age of between 1500 and 1700 AD based on the known sequence of coins and vessels, but most of these artefacts belonged to the medieval period. A sample size of 45 individuals was used in this study from individual graves. The results of this study indicate that the sample from Nozoji-ato is characterized by an old age-at-death distribution and high number of caries-lesion and ante-mortem tooth loss frequencies. Individuals from the Nozoji-ato site also tend to lack evidence for lethal trauma, a phenomenon that is frequently observed in other comparative medieval populations. The results presented in this study led to the conclusion that the Nozoji-ato exhibit different bioarchaeological features compared to the populations from the first half of the medieval period and that living conditions at this site were less severe than expected.