Morphological investigation for infant and immature skeletal remains of Prehistoric Japan

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The aim of this project is to collect skeletal information on infant and/or immature specimens of Prehistoric Japan, during which we focus the time periods on Jomon and Yayoi, and thus to provide a clue to infer any ontogenetic aspects of the prehistoric population in Japan. The research includes the following menus.1: Database for immature skeletal remains of Jomon and Yayoi Period We scrutinized the previous archeological excavation reports around all over the Japan and constructed the database for immature skeletal remains from Jomon and Yayoi periods. The recovery of the immature specimens was site-dependent. The site specific bias seems greater than expected. We should think of the possibility to recover any demographic parameters from this database to be premature.2: Linear dimensional data collection on Jomon/Yayoi immature specimens We measured the linear dimensions almost following to Martin's method, using Yayoi specimens stored at Kyushu University, Jomon specimens at Kyoto University, Tokyo University and National Science Museum.3 : Three-dimensional data collection for the cranium Using the 3-dimensional digitizer purchased in this grant budget, we collected the 3-d data for cranial anatomical landmarks in order to investigate the ontogenetic change of shape/size of the cranium. What we have to do afterwards includes comparisons of analyses using linear dimensions which usually use the allometry, and those using geometric morphometrics which in turn use the 2-d or 3-d points data.