Regional structures of Kofun period societies reconstructed with Geographic Information System

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1. Spatial analyses of archaeological materials of Kofun period Japan were made with the Geographic Information System software and specially developed programs using Perl and Perl/Tk. These programs were published in the final report of this research.2. With these programs, the Digital Elevation Model data published by the Geographical Survey Institute in Japan and the Global Topographic Data of GTOPO30 could be utilized for such spatial analyses.3 A database of the keyhole-shaped buial mounds in the Cyugoku-Shikoku region (westem Honsyu) was made and with the GIS program the distribution of them was visualized on topographically analyzed images.4. A program for estimating ancient agricultural productivity was developed and a computer-simulated model of ancient settlement was made with it. The result was also compared with the real distribution of burial mounds.5. The traffic and communication models were made on the bases of the settlement model for the purpose of developing simulations of population-increase, marital relationships, commodity exchanges and cultural transmissions6. With these analyses, the spatial investigation of the Kofun-peiod societies was innovated. This research can be one of the first examples of applying Geographic Information System systematically to archaeological materials in Japan.