The Dispersion, Adaptation, and Acculturation of the Ainu Culture in the Kuril Islands

千岛群岛为以下研究提供了独特的实验室条件。在过去的4000年里，有三种不同的生存文化先后在千岛群岛居住和放弃。工业化国家的殖民地占领了该地区。总的来说，这些职业代表了一个不断增长的技术能力、组织复杂性和社会、经济和政治网络一体化的轨迹，为建立当代复杂性提供了一个框架。作者还假设，在全新世早期和中期，更小、更孤立、纬度更高的岛屿（中部和北部）对持续定居的吸引力较小，但我们也有理由相信，早于2500 B.P.的遗址仍然存在。此外，以前对北太平洋史前海洋文化的研究往往主要集中在生态和适应问题上。在太平洋的亚洲一侧，人们已经接受了一段时间，国家社会可能对沿海觅食者产生了重大影响，这被视为东北亚和北美海洋文化之间的主要差异。本项目研究将这种对亚北极地区恶劣环境的适应和定居系统的关注作为一个突破，但试图将Kuril Ainu的适应置于中世纪以来东北亚的政治经济中。它还有助于理解岛屿和偏远的千岛群岛与东亚世界体系之间的相互作用。

The Kuril Islands provide uniquely laboratory-like conditions for the following research concern. In the past 4,000-years three distinct subsistence cultures successively inhabited and abandoned the Kuril Islands. Colonies of industrialized nations have occupied the region. Taken together these occupations represent a trajectory of growing technological capacity, organizational complexity, and integration of social, economic and political networks providing a framework for building up to contemporary complexities. The author also assume that the smaller, more isolated, higher latitude (central and northern) island would have been less attractive for sustained settlement in the early and mid-Holocene, but we also have reason to believe that sites earlier than 2500 B.P. remain to be found there.Additionally, previous research on prehistoric maritime cultures of the north Pacific has tended to focus primarily on questions of ecology and adaptation. On the Asian side of the Pacific, it has been accepted for some time that state societies probably had a significant influence on coastal foragers and this is seen as a major difference between Northeast Asian and North American maritime cultures. This project research takes this concern with adaptation to a harsh environment in a sub-Arctic zone and settlement systems as a breakthrough but attempts to place Kuril Ainu adaptations within the political economy of Northeast Asia since the medieval times. It also contributes to the understanding of interactions between the insular and remote Kuril Ainu and the East Asian World System.