People

I am a quantitative and evolutionary archaeologist with a strong interest in Japanese prehistory. I am specialised in the application and development of computational and statistical models to understand the past, in particular, methods for inferring past population dynamics and patterns of cultural transmission using the archaeological record. I am the PI of the ENCOUNTER project, and I am coordinating its overall strategy as well as developing statistical solutions to different work packages

Principal Investigator

ENRICO CREMA

I have a corporate and legal background working in both Japan and London and will help organise the hiring process, fieldwork,  conference/workshops logistic, as well as financial aspects of the ENCOUNTER project. 

Project Administrator

MARIKO YAMAMOTO-WILKINS

I am an anthropological archaeologist with interests in the evolution of material culture, quantitative methods, and the archaeology of Northeast Asia and Japan. I specialize in the use of computational methods to model the dynamics of material culture diversification and the geochemical analysis of ceramics. I am a post-doctoral research assistant in the ENCOUNTER project and will be collecting artefact data that will identify locations of cultural discontinuity and the extent to which these influence the adoption of farming

Research Associate

ERIK GJESFJELD

PDRA3 will investigate the spread of rice and millet farming by collating archaeobotanical evidence and analysing the associated radiocarbon record.

Research Associate

PDRA3

 I am a computational archaeologist with interests in cultural evolution and Central and East Asian archaeology. I will be analysing the pollen, climatic, and soil records to reconstruct the landcover changes during the Jomon/Yayoi transition as well as model spatial variation in the suitability and productivity of rice and millet farming and its relation to demographic changes between the end of the Jomon period and the first half of the Yayoi period. I am jointly supervised by Enrico Crema & Akihiro Yoshida (U. of Kagoshima).

PhD Student

Leah Brainerd

I am a science-based archaeologist with a major interest in prehistoric food, diet and cuisine. I use organic residue analysis of pottery and stable isotope analysis of human bone to investigate major dietary transitions in the past, with a particular interest in the transition from foraging to food production. I am a senior scientist on ENCOUNTER and I will lead the team in  BioArCh, York working on the identification of rice and millet on ceramics.

Senior Scientist

OLIVER CRAIG

PDRA1 will carry out organic residue analysis on Jomon and Yayoi pottery to identify the presence of rice and millets.

Research Associate

PDRA1

I am an archaeologist/archaeo-scientist who is working on the East Asian archaeology especially focusing on the transition of subsistence, diet, and cuisine through the long-term Neolithization process in this area. In Encounter project, my role is to explore the appropriate material to answer the questions, as well as to contextualize the analyzed data into the wider theoretical discussion.

Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

SHINYA SHODA

My research is focused on the Jomon and Yayoi periods of the Japanese island, in particular to the formation process of Jomon culture, the increasing sedentism which characterises Eastern Japan during the Early and the Middle Jomon period and the decline in the number of archaeological sites observed in concurrence to climatic changes in the Late and Final Jomon periods. I am also interested in the comparison of the chronology of the Jomon period in relation to other regions of Eurasia. I am specialised in radiocarbon dating and isotopic analysis of organic residues from Jomon pottery, and more broadly wish to improve our understanding of pottery production as well as settlement pattern and structure.

Chuo University

KENICHI KOBAYASHI

 I am a physical geographer and palynologist with interests in vegetation history and climate change since the Last Glacial period in East Asia and Japan.  I will be modelling biomass productivity during the Jomon and the Yayoi period in Japan using pollen records, in order to provide valuable information for inferring past interactions between humans and the environment. I will also jointly supervise PhD Student at the  University of Cambridge. 

Kagoshima University

AKIHIRO YOSHIDA