 The Archeological Research Facility is located in Huichin, the ancestral and unceded territory of Chochenyo-speaking Oloni people, successors of the historic and sovereign Buruna-Bana Valley-Mida County, who acknowledge that this land remains of great importance to the Oloni people, and that the ARF community inherits a history of archaeological scholarship that has disturbed Oloni ancestors and erased living Oloni people from the present and future of this land. It is therefore our collective responsibility to critically transform our archaeological inheritance in support of Oloni sovereignty and to hold the University of California accountable to the needs of all Native Americans and Indigenous peoples by our actions, not just our work. Today, our speakers include Dr. Junzo Hado, Amaruele Gulliamini, Anna Nielsen, Sandra Otovara, Otovara, Sokomeyo. I won't read you the title, but I find it interesting in the discussion of there on the website, kind of coming back into the world after, you know, as the pandemic eased up a bit. Their goals for this collective project for the East Asian Archaeology Lab were to collect archaeological data, understanding continuity and change in landscape practices in the mountainous regions of Japan, to resume PEV research that was started before the pandemic and to start discussions with Japanese scholars and local stakeholders to develop inter and transdisciplinary approaches. So we have a group of people here having lots of conversations that are going to be able to squeeze in. Let's welcome them to the act. Thank you, Jun, and thank you, everybody. And as Jun said, this is a report of our summer activities after two and a half years of not being able to do pretty much no research in Japan. None of the non-Japanese citizens were able to go to Japan pretty much unless you are a permanent resident. And even though I was able to go to Japan pretty much, I couldn't do any research. Rural parts of Japan, people are so scared of COVID and people didn't welcome people from Tokyo or big cities, not to say from America. So this summer, things were getting a little bit less tight and we decided this is a summer we're going to go to Japan. We can do whatever we can. And let me just see. So today's talk is not about theory, but I want you to think about what I said in my previous bad lunch when I talked about managing the forest with a focus on fire. We put a lot of emphasis on historical ecology, human impacts on the biosphere is very important to understand that landscape, soil, vegetation, plant succession and fire and traditional ecological knowledge and materiality, multiple temporal and spatial scales. From there, archaeology can really do the study of the long-distance and by working with agri-ecologists, we can start thinking about landscape, cultural landscape, but tied to the multiple equilibria of ecosystems. Materiality, I want to tell a couple of examples that there's a big debate to what extent we see continuity from the German period to the present. And ideologically speaking, I'm not one of those who are using German to push back the origins of the Japanese to the older period. There are people who take that stance. I'm not one of them, but that said, I see a lot of continuity in landscape practice and material culture. I'm going to pass around two pieces. This is lack-aware, made of poison oak. I have a couple slides related to that. You won't get a logic because it's completely dry, but this technique goes back to the German period. This is a piece of fabric made by an Ainu weaver, made of tree bark. And this technique, again, I'm sure, goes back quite well. The color part is more artistic contemporary part, but the technique itself goes back. And that kind of materiality, when you think of how long it takes to get the materials, it's not just a weaving technique or lack-aware production technique. It's really, you are so closely tied to local environment. If you're interested in the theory part, please visit the University of Cambridge YouTube site, where I have a field talk about how we think of Japanese archaeology from a perspective of the intersection of historical ecology, agroecology, and resilience theory. So for my research, I'm very interested in the long-term change and continuity and change in food practice. And I said in my previous presentation that the shift with a focus on starchy plant food, a staple food, at around 7,000 years ago, that was a major, major change. And in a way, I think that was more important than the adoption of agriculture. And I think on Monday's Enrico-Crimas talk, you guys got some sense of different angles, that's what kind of data are available. And as I said previously, Japan, 2,000 of the countries covered by the forest, three-quarters of the land is hilly and mountainous. So we are getting more and more interested in the historical and ethnographic examples of mountainous peoples, foodways, lifeways, what kind of continuities can we see. And that includes the use of fire, not only for Sweden agriculture, but to clear the land, the use of nuts, including acorns and buckeyes, the lack of poison or trees have to produce the lack of air that I'm just circulating, and the use of wild plants such as the Warabi Bracken. So with these in mind, I went to Japan this summer and I was so happy that three of my students were able to join me or I joined one of them as they do their research in Japan. Well, at least for me, there are three goals that one is to do archival research and museum trips to collect archaeological data to understand continuity and change in landscape practice in the mountainous regions of Japan. Second part is a laboratory work at the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties to resume paleoethic botanical research that we started before the pandemic and to make trips with Japanese agroecologists and scholars in other fields to visit mountainous areas of Japan to discuss the potential of inter and transitionary approaches. So just to do the archaeology part, this is a sample that we put aside for a while, and we are now coming back. This is the Sanay Moriyama number nine site excavated by the prefectural archaeologists, and we got some samples. We got data of pollen, phytorys, diatom, analysis, and radiocarbon protein dates, or we did a rough sorting of nutshells. And we haven't had the chance to touch on the seed assemblage part. So this summer, we went to the Nara National Cultural Properties Research Institute, and we spent about a week to resume where we are at. It will take a while, it's been a while, we put this project aside. But the samples are all waterlogged, the conditions, as you can see, there are a couple of buckeye layers that really backbends the buckeye layers. This may actually push back the origins of buckeye use. A little bit earlier than previously Japanese archaeologists were discussing, and that matches with Enrico yesterday's talk of the decline in the number of sites at around that time. Previously, people said that the use of buckeye started after the decline, but it may actually go back. We also had a chance to join a workshop, and here's Anna, Sandra, and Kazunishihara, who was visiting us until last summer. They all did presentations, and we had really productive discussions with Japanese archaeologists. Another thing that we did in terms of archaeology is to go back to the Gosono site that we worked in 2019. We took soil samples, we did finish sorting the samples, we got AMS dates, and that was actually a bit of a surprise that the site we are understanding with the site is a middle German site at around 4,500 calibrated BP, but our dates came back much earlier, middle of the early German around 5,800 years ago. So I went back, I went to the site twice. First, I told them, this is a result, three out of the four AMS dates came back this way. What do you think? They said that, oh, no, that must be some kind of sample mix-up. Three weeks later, we went back. They said that actually they did go through all the excavated potters, and they did find a lot more early German potters than they initially thought of. So now, actually, it was actually really good that our results actually made contribution to the understanding of the site. And for us, it's great because we really want to work on the Gosono site as an example, mountainous part of German settlement. But the time span that we initially built was too short, but now it looks like we actually do have a longer time span. So we are hoping to go back and now, Sandra, I need to write this up. So Iwate is also very rich with ethnohistorical record. And here's one of the places that this is right the town next to Gosono, where after several visits, I was finally able to be allowed to do lack of self-collecting. The left-of-side is me. As you can see, that's pretty much what you can get from one scratch of lack of self-collecting. So imagine how long it takes to produce that red ball that I just circulated. But this time, we really looked at the landscape. These transplanted lack of tree like five-year lack of tree seedling. And in terms of thinking about German plant management, we are really wondering lack of tree were also managed in that way. That's one of the proposals of Sanayi Maruyama archaeologists. And looking at the vegetation, even though the backside is the cedar tree that are planted very recently, there are still undecided scholars left around there from which we can really start thinking about the continuity in the forest composition in the area. Very quickly, we also visited another part of the Iwate prefecture where we were able to visit former Sassanban agriculture area. And on the right side is a photo from right after the Second World War. On the left side is the other side of the area where people were burning and one side is burning for the field and the other side is for Sweden agriculture. And there are written records of how that was practiced. This is one of the areas we have huge amount of Sweden agriculture literature. And we started to learn how the crop cycling, crop cycles and landscape management are related. I don't want to take up too much of my students' time. So I'm going to go through very quickly. Another place we visited is further in the mountainous area, Aka in Iwate, where we were able to see photos of types of radish, red daikon, which are pickled that way. After three years, it's like this. The important part is not it's not only traditional food, but it's really part of the crop cycle of Sweden agriculture. And even though they stopped burning, they still maintain the types of crops that were related to the practice. The top one is chestnut dumpling. And the left bottom is acorn dumpling that local in-owner served us after talking to her for a while. She first showed that and said that, well, if you guys have more time, I can also give you acorn dumplings. And we looked at it and said, really, we would love to taste that. And after 30 minutes, she gave it. And the top is grilled tofu, which was really the main part of protein source for the area. We also visited Shikoku. This is part of the Higashi-Iya-Pokushima prefecture, where another area that you see the tradition of Sweden agriculture until very recently, this is now designated as the Nishi-Awa Steep Slope Land Agricultural System, which is part of the globally important agricultural heritage system, GS. And there again, they stopped burning, but part of the crop cycles are really still there. Even in the vicinity of Tokyo, this is actually my Kamakura Homes neighborhood. You can still see that part of the what we call the Satoyama landscape, the human impacted landscape, kind of commonly utilized area. It's still, you can still see the remaining patterns. This is rice paddy field, but it's actually very small, that it's very narrow valley. And the rest of the area are used for cultivating various types of crops and millet. So you can see that even in the Tokyo area, it's actually the hilly area all the way very close to the ocean. You can see that the use of mountainous resource was very important. OK, so with that as an introduction, I have three students who want to present what they did this summer, which I think. What I was really pleased this summer, I think before May, I felt, OK, I have three graduate students who are doing their own things. And even though we talk a lot about historical ecology, their own project, my project is separate from them. And I think traveling through of the Japanese archipelago with Emanuele, Anna and Sandra, I was really happy to see that we got so many things in common that our research themes are so closely tied. And I was especially happy to think that none of them is working on Jomon hunter gatherers of the mainland Honshu. And yet we got so many things in common. So first, I believe Emanuele is giving his seven minutes presentation on linking cuisine and the environment of on the island of Hokkaido. OK, hi, everyone. So today, I'll be talking about my preliminary fieldwork in Hokkaido and my research directions and how they have shifted somewhat after being able to visit Hokkaido this summer. So just to give you an idea of where Hokkaido is located, it's the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago and it's the homeland of the indigenous people. And first off, I want to start talking a little bit broadly about cuisine and anthropology and why it is interesting to me, but also whether it can be used as a tool to impact the larger context of human environment relationships. So I think that as archaeologists strive to understand changes in the human past, cuisine poses a fascinating paradox. We know that food is tightly linked to people's identity and we know that food is not just fuel. It is a type of material culture that is highly symbolic. deeply ingrained and persisting over time. We also know through studies of taste that taste preference for food is defined very early on in life and positive experiences such as calories, sweet taste, mood elevation and social reward bear with the food, make the food light, whereas negative experiences make it disliked. And so the question arises if food waste are so stable, deeply ingrained and food is so closely tied to identity, how is change possible in the first place? But we know that change does happen. We know this from the archaeological and from the ethnographic record. And so I'm interested in understanding what factors are capable of causing food waste to change and linking it back to human environment relationships. I wonder whether shifting dynamics in the interaction between people and the environment can act as a driving factor for the changes in cuisine that we observe archaeologically. And the photos I just have two food items, one from the Jomon period, which is called a Jomon hamburger. It's a mix of meat and plants. And the other from the Ainu period much later on, which is a mix of fiber and starch from lily bulbs. So in terms of pursuing this research, I want to draw on two main theoretical frameworks, historical ecology and resilience theory. In terms of historical ecology, as a framework arrests on a series of phosphorylids, and I'd like to draw attention to two of them in particular. So the first one about human environment relationships developed through mutual interaction between humans and other species. So I can assume that people in Hokkaido were always affecting the environment to a degree because the interaction is mutual. So there is no such thing as pristine nature. And the other postulate on how human disturbance in the environment can have both positive as well as negative effects. So I can assume that their practices for environmental management were sometimes successful and other times damaging to species diversity. And then lastly, in terms of theory, I'm interested in resilience theory because of its focus on change as a representative state of social ecological systems, which are continuously transient. And in addition, resilience theorists believe that flexibility rather than stasis promotes system resilience or the capacity to adapt to change. So if this is true, I can assume that lack of flexibility would lead to problems in the long run in terms of resource extraction. So time flew back into the picture. I wonder how do periods of height with system resilience that are characterized by diversity and flexibility in resource extraction practices versus periods of over-stationalization affect cuisine, but also is it possible to correlate instances of loss of resilience with changes in cuisine? And can some of the changes in cuisine that we see archaeologically be explained through episodes of change in environmental management practices? So these things I was thinking about before going to Hokkaido and then as I was able to visit this summer, some of my ideas, the more practical sides of the research have shifted somewhat. So to start with my data set, I set out wanting to explore changes in food through the lengths of plant mapper remains. And Hokkaido is well known even within Japan for having one of the older Paleo-Pepotonical traditions in the country. And so there is an abundance of plant mapper remain data in Hokkaido in the sense that many sites have been sampled. But once I went there, I realized that the quantity of Paleo-Pepotonical data for mapper remains there is not necessarily equivalent to its quality always. So what I mean by that is that although many sites have been sampled, a lot of the sites were sampled only where there were burned soil features and in the hearts. And so while the situation is slightly different from the larger sites, this problem of judgmental sampling still makes comparison across sites somewhat more difficult than I was hoping for. So going forward, because Hokkaido has a very rich settlement data record but also very rich heritage artifact collections, I'm thinking of using a mix of mapper remains as well as starch analysis from this heritage artifact collections to analyze strangers and food over time. And the plant record for Hokkaido wild plant specifically is quite rich in plants that are likely to leave our start remains. And here I have a photo of a food item that we were served in Hokkaido, a traditional Ainu dessert made of millet and emmer cork tree berries. And then lastly, another aspect that I shipped it following my visit to Hokkaido is my time period focus. So while I began wanting to look at changes over time, focusing on the Jomon hunter-gatherers, after going to Hokkaido, it became apparent that the Japanese periodization of archeology has had the effect of alienating indigenous Ainu people from their archeological heritage. And I have heard some Ainu stakeholders voicing their concerns on how Jomon data have been interpreted without any input from indigenous people, and that there is a need to highlight more the continuity between the Jomon period and the Ainu indigenous people today as well. In addition to that, I also visited the Uppapoi New National Ainu Museum that was opened in 2020, and I have some photos of that here. And I noticed the lack of material culture from any period prior to the Ainu period. And so noticing these patterns, I believe that if I am to conduct a study of who changes over time in 2022 in Hokkaido, there is a need to pay attention to the complicated dynamics between academia and Ainu stakeholders. And there is scope for conducting research that is now specifically focused only on the Jomon period, but is longer in time scope through the focus of the long-duree in a way that can highlight both continuity and diversity between the prehistoric period and today's indigenous peoples in Hokkaido. That said, through this kind of study, I don't wish to repeat the mistakes of past researchers who have labeled Ainu people as Stone Age people and made all sorts of careless connections between the two. But I think this can be done in a way that can create a more inclusive narrative. And that's it for me, thank you. Okay, thank you, Emanuele. And now we are moving on to Anna's presentation. It should be labeled as Nielsen Baguio. Hello, everyone. My talk is not nearly as well organized as anything that Junko or Emanuele just had to say. So please bear with me. And it's somewhat characteristic of the, I guess, slightly disorganized time I had getting to Japan over the last two and a half years. As Junko mentioned, the country was very close to researchers for a while. And so it was actually quite sudden when I found out that I was able to go and was able to go to Okayama University as a visiting researcher for two months, which was absolutely fantastic. I'm so grateful I was able to go. And I can honestly say there were no negative experiences whatsoever over the two months that I was there. It's just so wonderful to be there. I'm going to talk very generally about some landscape trends that I saw in Okayama because that's what I was able to look at. This is one of the, so I work in the Kofrin period and I look at Kofrin period's assistance. The Kofrin period very briefly is Japan state formation period. It's characterized by mounted tombs and all sorts of new technologies that were coming into the Japanese archipelago. And this is one of the stone chamber tombs on the mountain right behind where I was living. There were dozens of them. There were hundreds of Kofrin period sites and tombs all around the area of Okayama. It's a very archaeologically rich area and a very overlooked and understudied area in a lot of ways. And so I just put this picture here to characterize the density of archaeological data that's available, all of archaeological sites. And then there's quite a lot of data available and then few studies in some ways. The area has been understudied, as I said. Like I said, I was able to go to Okayama University to work there. And I'm very grateful for all of the support that I received for working in the lab of Jun Mitsumoto, who is actually going to be a professor from Okayama University, is going to be coming here to Berkeley as a visiting researcher in the next two weeks. And he'll be here for the next six months. So if you get the chance to speak to him, he studies gender archaeology of the Kofrin period and he's also an expert in remote sensing methods. That's one aspect of archaeology that Okayama University is particularly strong in. And so the conversations I was able to have with people in the lab and while I wasn't able to participate in any of the fieldwork because I was there exactly during the Japanese summer break for the universities, I was still able to get a very good idea of what people are doing and set the groundwork, being able to go back soon. And so I was also able to, like Junko mentioned, I won't linger on this too long. I was able to travel with her to the village of Higashi-ya, which is deep in the mountains of Tokushima. And we were examining landscapes and landscape practice over time. So you can see, here's Junko, there's Sandra in the background. There's, Professor Hitaka is one of the, and he, I grow ecologist at Ehime University. And then we have, I just picked a couple, this picture is very characteristic of the extremely steep landscapes that you have in this area. That's why people were so reliant on slash and burn farming, to be able to clear their fields, to grow grains besides rice. There really was no way to practice any sort of rice agriculture. And this is just one of the bridges made using traditional techniques of cutting katsuro vines that people needed these bridges to cross these very steep and narrow, gorgeous to be able to get around. Anyway, I was- I was very scared by the wind. I think I was getting too old that I got smeared, meeting other people's feet. I should have put a video in. There were steel cables inside the bridge. It wasn't made fully traditionally, because in the past it would have just been those vines and nothing else folding you up. But the time we were able to spend there, for one, it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. And two, I'm so glad that Junko invited me and that I was able to come. But also the fact that even though, if some of you have been able to attend over the last couple of days, either of the talks held by Enrique Cremac where he was talking a lot about rice agriculture, especially on a Monday's talk, he was talking about rice agriculture in Japan. And he did mention, well, there was a big focus on when was the beginning of rice agriculture because rice is so connected to Japanese identity today. It is likely that in the past, up until probably the Meiji period, up until the last couple of centuries, rice did not constitute the staple food of many people or even of most people in the Japanese archipelago. Plenty of other crops, millet, wheat, buckwheat, mountain vegetables, plenty of other foods were staple foods that people relied on. For many people in the Japanese archipelago, rice was a food and a wheat food that they were only able to access a few times a year, perhaps. And so on a place like this where rice simply couldn't be grown, of course they would consume rice imported from elsewhere once in a while, but they were reliant on the crops that they could grow in this particular area. And I want, well, I'm going to sidetrack really quick. As many of you know, a personal interest of mine is horses in the Kofun period. And I was able to do a lot of work with horses this time around in Okayama. I happened to live about five minutes from the university stables. So I went there actually most mornings to work and help the Drasash team prepare. And I was able to observe, in several cases, while I was able to observe four different ferriers working because I'm a ferrier, I'm a horseshoeer as well. And I'm very interested in equine hoof care in the past. This year, I was able to visit and Japan has a number of extremely endangered native breeds on the archipelago. This is the Noma horse of which there are currently 47 horses left in this breed. They're likely to go extinct in the next 20 years, but these are the descendants of horses that were used historically, horses that were ridden by samurai, horses that were used in agricultural work. And they, many of these breeds were either critically endangered or went extinct entirely prior to World War II. Several people have tried to preserve eight breeds that are left. And I was able to go to the only facility that's still breeding and protecting these normal horses. I was also able to go to a special exhibit they were having in Isimo and talking about horse riding in the past. They are using here a lot of honeywa, a lot of ceramic kind of statuettes that were placed on Kofun tombs during the Kofun period that depict saddles and tack that elite people would have used in riding horses. This is one of the university horses who likes to be scratched in a particular spot. I found the right spot. So also this here is a Dosanko horse, another native breed of horse that I saw in the historical village of Hokkaido. And his handler is very kindly showing me the horses feet and how they shoe the horse. This is one of the university fairies, actually Hokkaido University, not Okoyama trimming the horses hooves. They use traditional tools, very similar to the tools that Junko would have used in collecting lacquer staff to make that Udushi bowl that she passed around. They use a very similar type of kama, but this is the one that's specifically designed for cutting horse hooves. I was actually given a couple of them, which is completely fantastic because you can only buy these in a couple of specialty stores in Japan and then you will not find them anywhere else in the world because Japan is the only place that cuts horse hooves with these tools. And they've probably been using these tools for hundreds of years, if not longer, but no one has ever really studied this, so they don't know. So a lot of you know that this is my private personal interest in the future. I would really like to create a project that examines equestrianism in the Kofun period because there are plenty of archeologists who are studying the saddles and tack of the Kofun period. I don't believe there are really any archeologists in Japan who have any experience with riding horses because it's just a very unusual thing. There are many archeologists who look at this tack but don't have experience with handling horses or how tack would fit on a horse. No shade to the archeologists. It's just riding horses and interacting regularly with horses is not a normal thing in Japan. They don't have very many horses. Outside of the horse racing industry, there are almost no horses that you'll see in the countryside. And so because of this dearth of I would say practical knowledge in how horses are used because the historical period use of horses in agriculture is just a distant memory to most people. I believe there's kind of a gap in there that especially if there's experimental archeology programs that are using these native horses, which are the closest thing, again, they're descendants of historical horses that the closest we have to Japanese horses in the past. It could also be very helpful in preservation of native horse breeds. Back to the environment of Okayama really quickly. And this here is just, these are several hundred year old kiln sites. I was the area where I was living is very famous for this type of pottery called Bezenware. And I went back many times actually to the place to the town where they're producing all of this Bezenware to the town of Bezen and made quite a few friends with people there who are producing Bezenware as able to make some myself. I was given tours of several kilns in this case because his parents were mining the store. This particular family who I visited several times sent their 10 year old son to give me and my friend a tour of the kiln. And this boy had so much environmental knowledge. He was, I couldn't believe, one, the level of knowledge he had about the environment in which he was living and the detailed knowledge he had at age 10 of how everything in the kiln works. His explanations sounded to me like an archeologist talking about the way that kilns work. It was really quite amazing. And so there are a lot of people living in Okayama because of the mountainous landscape. And I guess the more rural character of Okayama in some ways who are very aware of the local landscape that they live in and how important it is to their livelihood. Okayama is, as the name suggests, it's written with the characters for hill and mountain. It's a very mountainous area. It doesn't have very many flat places. Rices grown in the flat sphere is one of the rice fields being filled with water. This was in early June, but it also has a very unique climate compared to many other parts of Japan. Japan, as you may know, is very hot, very wet. They have monsoons and floods and typhoons. Okayama actually receives a lot less rain than other parts of Japan. Everyone was always telling me that it's called Harinokuni, like the sunny country. It has the highest number of sunny days a year of anywhere in Japan. And its climate is often compared more to a Mediterranean climate. They grow a lot of citrus fruits. They grow peaches. My friend Mika took me to her family's grape farm. They're the largest grape producing area of anywhere in Japan because of that aforementioned Mediterranean climate. Yet, at the same time, they still experience severe natural disasters related to water, related to anything else. In 2018, there was severe flooding, which shocked a lot of people in Okayama because they weren't used to that kind of heavy rain and flooding. They hadn't, a lot of people hadn't thought that this could happen. I'd ask people about it and they'd pull out their phones and scroll back to 2018. And they'd show me pictures. This was the flooding outside my house. This was the flooding outside my station. This is how bad it was. This here is on top of one of the kofun tombs. This is the fourth largest keyhole-shaped kofun tomb in the Japanese archipelago, is located in Okayama. Actually, one of the stables that I volunteered at on Saturdays is right on the other. It's tucked right up against the kofun itself. It's right on the other side of the tomb. You can see here, there was a lot of damage and flooding to the tomb itself in 2018. It caused a landslide on the side of the tomb. And so anyway, these unique characteristics of Okayama, since I'm interested in subsistence patterns in the past, how people in the kofun period, what were they actually eating? Was it in fact rice? We have this kofun center. We have elite people were building large numbers of tombs, both huge monumental-mounted tombs, and then also the smaller stone chamber tombs that still belong to elites. They were building these all over the place. What was their subsistence pattern like? Who was eating rice? What was being grown? It's my suspicion that there was not enough flat land to produce enough rice to feed everyone, that people were reliant on other forms of subsistence, most likely growing grains, millet, and buckwheat in the hills. But I'm trying to put together a project that will examine the proportion of what kinds of grains are being grown. I'm sorry, I've gone way over time. But I think, as you can see, when Anna came to work with me, she says she wants to work on the kofun field. I was thinking, another person who wants to work on, not Jomar. And it turned out that what she wants to do is very much relevant to what I'm interested in, the transition from equal to millet to rice or not. So we now share so many things in common. We talk a lot and when we look at the landscape, I'm really happy that we share a lot of things. So I think we are kind of running out of time. We do have afternoon. Sandra's video, I know many of you may have to leave, but those of you who can stay, please be here for nine more minutes with us. And if not, take a look at it on the web later. So here's another student who's not working on Japan. Hold on a sec. Hold on a sec. I'm sorry, I forgot to put the microphone. I am a PhD candidate. You guys here? Oh, you, I'm here super clean. Unfortunately, I am teaching a discussion section exactly at the same time as this round back. And that is a reason that I cannot be physically there with you. However, I really appreciate the opportunity to be part of this presentation alongside Junco and my other colleagues, Anna and Emanuele. So as Junco stated at the beginning of this presentation, I had the opportunity to return to Japan after three years sponsored by the Institute for International Studies here at UC Berkeley and the Sumimoto Foundation via the Research Institute for Humans and Nature in Kyoto, Japan. During my two weeks in Japan, I spent time at the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Property, working on polyethnobotanical remains from San Emanueleman overnight and strengthening a working relationship between the Institute and UC Berkeley. After we were done with this work, Junco and I returned to Goshono Archaeological Site, a prehistoric German site where the polyethnobotanical remains we had been working on for the past three years were from. This return was an essential stop during our time in Japan because we had committed ourselves to go back and discuss the results from our research. And we were very glad to see that the director of the museum at the site was very pleased with what we follow, what we found, sorry. Following the laboratory work in Nara Research Institute and before visiting Goshono, I had the opportunity to join Junco and a team of multidisciplinary scholars on our research trip through rural Japan focused on the regions of Shikoku and Iwata to bring in preliminary research on the analysis of multinous agricultural landscapes. The main objectives of our visit were to, one, to identify changes and continuities in the landscape and two, learn about the traditional ecological knowledge that has been maintained through the collective memory of these regions. And as we move deeper into the mountains and isolated regions of Japan, I cannot help but feel a familiarity and recognize the similarities of the landscape and the culture between Japan and my dissertation area of study which is the Northern Highlands of Ojata Mexico, Mexico, also known as La Sierra Norte. And La Sierra Norte, Ojata, similar to Japan, is a mountainous region isolated from mainstream culture where people still practice traditional agriculture for self-subsistence like, and like rural Japan today, the indigenous people of Ojata face the challenge of an aging population that is the one that maintains landscapes and practices and culture, both rural Japan and Oaxaca, risk-blowsing knowledge, traditions, and the capacity of self-subsistence stream-grade generations in the mountains, migrating to bigger cities. So moving into the Mexico part of my presentation, I had the opportunity this summer to spend one month in Oaxaca thanks to the Stanley Brandes Fellowship for Ethnographic Research. And I arrived to the Northern Highlands in early August, a travel between three indigenous villages during my time there. These villages were Piyatalla de Castro, San Paolo Nexicho, and San Pondubino. The objective of my research trip there was to identify villages that, one, maintain intimate connection to their land, through their agricultural knowledge and practice. Two, places where archaeological features were present in the landscape. And three, where people were interested in collaboratively being part of the project that I am beginning. And I found these features in these three places that I'm talking to you about today. So, other findings that I had during my time in the Northern Highlands is that these communities have a complex relationship with their indigenous identity. And while they'll still maintain Osoci Costumbres, which is their traditional ways, they often want to highlight their Western features to others. And those features are very assimilated as well as they are. So this is a Catholic Church. And there is a lot of syncretism between the indigenous traditions and the Spanish tradition that now predominates in Mexico. Then I also found that each village has a different relationship with its land and its agricultural practices. These three villages each have different, yeah, different natural resources and also different practices. And although they all cultivate the same staples, which are beans, corn and galites, each village also has different approaches to agriculture. So Obieta La De Castro is known, is historically known for their coffee production. And it is now diversifying its practice to include fruit trees and also trying to step away from the use of chemical fertilizers to take on a more agricultural orientation. San Juan Lubina, which is the smallest town that I, or village that I visited over the summer, only has 500 inhabitants. And they are mostly women and the elderly. This town is the one that recorded the most amount of deaths during the pandemic. And from these three villages that I had the opportunity to spend time in, is the one that reported to have imported foods from Oaxaca City, using money sent to them from the US or migrants from the region in the US. Since there are mostly women and elderly in the town, it is very hard to continue to produce enough food for everyone. However, as you can see in these pictures, people still take very good care of their land and the men that are still in the town, as well as women and everyone that can work the land, it is actively participating in that. Also, there are so many pictures, archaeological pictures as we walk through, through these landscapes, and it's very interesting. Then the last town I visited was San Pedro Nexicho. And although San Pedro shares the same staples, which are corn and calitas, this town is also very interested since very recently in flower production, which is a new economic activity for them. Well, lastly, what I wanted to share is that I will be working for my dissertation in the street communities, however, I will be paying particular attention or I will be specifically focused on San Pedro Nexicho and San Juan de Vina, since these villages have archaeological evidence of them being the first places inhabited by the sabotage after the Montalban decline in 2018 or even earlier. And these two communities also had an early influx of Spanish conquerors after the Spanish crown arrived to Oaxaca in 1521. So, yeah, these pictures of San Pedro Nexicho, what I wanted to highlight is that these are pictures, these pictures are of archaeological terraces. These are terraces that have been continuously used through time, since people first arrived to this area of the mountains. And the picture in the middle is, their present boat is something carved by the Zapotec used to build their temple and that was taken away or destroyed by the Spanish when they arrived. And it is now a piece in a Catholic church that is there in town. Well, thank you for your attention and I will let my colleagues continue and goodbye. Thank you. I'm Sandra Tiena. So, thank you very much for staying after 1 p.m. And I guess if anybody has questions, we can take one or two quick questions. Yes. Go back to that icon. When you said that it was important properly to fire management of the Lasky, how was it related to the fire management of the Lasky? So basically, in terms of doing the Sweden agriculture, they always had proper rotations. The first year, depending on the timing of the burning, if it's the spring burning, then it could be here in Millet, but if it's a fall burning, it's usually so far or something at the beginning. But they rotate its crops, so you don't plant the same type of crops two years in a row. And oftentimes what you see is part of the crop rotation is the daikon, different types of local daikon, really local variety of daikon. And that daikon happens to be really in that particular region only. And over what happened is when the Sassanban agriculture tradition had stopped, then you lose that variety as well. But over there, people are trying really hard to keep the variety so that they can actually continue the food waste. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that in Iwate, not only daikon, but people are also cultivating millet. It's coming back because it's actually fashionable. If you go to the women's faculty club, you'll see different types of millet in a fancy play, kind of same in Japan. So Iwate prefecture decided that will be one of their major agricultural products and putting a lot of efforts to revive that tradition. Iwate also had the advantage that it's cool so they can actually grow certain types of millet without pesticide. Whereas that the Shikoku, the southern part that Anna and I went together, that one was actually better known for millet cultivation in a way. But the prefecture is not putting a lot of effort. So even though it's a geocite and it's a beautiful, sloped agricultural landscape, but the landscape is much better in Shikoku but they stopped pretty much growing millet. There's a tiny teeny bit left for tourists and some who are interested in the idea. But so you can really see that maintaining local variety, maintaining millet cultivation, maintaining the subsistence cycle versus maintaining the food waste. These are two different things. So in Shikoku, people are importing millet from China or from Iwate because people are still eating it but they are not growing it anymore. In Iwate, they're still doing it and that's part of the reason that we feel that there's a lot of potential for collaboration between archeologists and farmers and local residents because the tradition is still there. And Japan, a lot of people think that it's like big cities, Tokyo and fancy old capital Kyoto but that's only a tiny teeny portion. The big part of Japan is rural and how are we gonna maintain and revive traditional agricultural knowledge and how we're gonna work with local residents? Now, if everybody moves to Tokyo, then that would be a disaster and that's happening in Japan a lot faster than in the United States or many other countries. So that was a very good question. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.