A challenge for archaeological methods in Japan

In Japan, over five thousand seven hundred archaeologists are engaged in the preservation and maintenance of cultural properties. Most of them, who are working at local governmental organizations, have faced harsh realities by lack of financial and human resources.

Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties is the only national institute to investigate and protect for immovable cultural properties. Our laboratory has carried out improvements in archaeological methods. Especially, we focus on supporting the field archaeologists by cost effective methods such as archaeological prospection, 3D documentation and archaeological spatial database with GIS.

These methods have already proved to be efficient in many parts of the world. Japanese archaeology has accumulated large amounts of data from excavations and studies. There is now a need for standardization and sharing of these datasets.

However, the specific character of the region must be considered. For example, Japanese archaeological structures mainly consist of wood and it changed soil properties through time. Therefore, detecting these structures requires to be able to distinguish between natural and archaelogical differences of soil.

This talk will be about our archaeological methodology.