People

ENRICO CREMA

Principal Investigator

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

MARIKO YAMAMOTO-WILKINS

Project Administrator

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. 

SIMON CARRIGNON

Research Associate

I am a computational social scientist with a background that combines computer science, evolutionary theory and social science. I design and test computer models to link hypotheses and theories about the evolution of human cultures, with data collected about actual and past human societies. In the ENCOUTER project I will study spatial patterns of cultural variation during the Jomon-Yayoi transition to infer evolutionary changes in cultural interconnectivity and the presence/absence of cultural boundaries

CHRIS STEVENS

Research Associate

I am an archaeobotanist who studies the domestication and the spread of domesticated crops particularly in East Asia. My specialist background is in the use of archaeological plant remains and radiocarbon data, combined with ecology to study agricultural systems within prehistory. My role on the encounter project is the investigation of the spread of rice and millet agriculture through the complication of a database of archaeobotanical records within Japan combined with radiocarbon data.

LEAH BRAINERD

PhD Student

 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).

SHINYA SHODA

Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

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.

KENICHI KOBAYASHI

Chuo University

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.

AKIHIRO YOSHIDA

Kagoshima University

 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.