Long-term Sustainability THROUGH Place-Based, Small-scale Economies Small-Scale Economies Project Approaches from Historical Ecology

Properly interpreting the information obtained from archaeological sites and remains requires the application of theory to link archaeological records with the lifeways of those who were using these items. Archaeologists infer interactions between human activity and material culture, borrowing various theories, including mathematical models from other fields such as biology, or referring to ethnological case studies. Interdisciplinary research, that is, collaboration with researchers from other fields of study, is, therefore, a prerequisite for the study of archaeology.

＜Fieldwork with polar bears ＞

In the summer of 1991, while I was a graduate student of Anthropology at McGill University, Canada, I participated in the excavation of a dwelling site of the Tule culture (1,000 to 1,500 A.C.) on Somerset Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The weather there is quite cold even in summer, and the temperature in midsummer is about the same as that in December in Japan. The area is also isolated, being more than 40km away from the closest community. What was most memorable during the six weeks of my fieldwork was the number of polar bears that I encountered. They numbered as many as 35, which unfortunately did not make my summer enjoyable. However, ethnographical records useful to understand archaeological samples were abundantly available in this area, and the archaeological remains in the permafrost soil were in particularly good states of preservation. This area proved to have some of the most favorable conditions for archaeologists who work to interpret lifeways and activities of human beings from the analysis of material culture. This excavation allowed me to reap the reward of learning about how archaeologists conducting research in the Arctic applied ethnographical and ecological knowledge and theory to their research.

＜RIHN Visiting Research Fellowship and interdisciplinary research＞

After receiving my Ph.D. from McGill University, I started to teach archaeology at University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, I was co-affiliated with RIHN as a Visiting Research Fellow and presented my research that a highly specialized subsistence strategy, in other words a decrease in subsistence and food diversity, in the Middle Jomon Period (about cal. 5,000 B.P.) caused greater vulnerability in the economic system and, as a result, led to a population decline. This research fellowship provided me with the opportunity to have an active engagement with researchers in diverse fields affiliated with RIHN.

In the course of my research at RIHN, I started to think more about what kind of role food diversity played in the history of human beings. The case studies from the modern era have evinced that food diversity is crucial in maintaining long-term stability of economic and social systems. For instance, the adverse effects of monoculture (production of a single crop/plant) have been actively discussed in the field of agriculture. How far should we go back in history to understand the origin of this kind of problem? And, how can we avoid it?

＜The Small-scale Economies Project and interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and international collaborative research＞

Such questions started my Incubation Study at RIHN. After two years of a start-up phase as a Feasibility Study, the Small-scale Economies Project was officially launched in 2014. This academic year marks the third and final year of this project, during which we are focusing on wrapping up our research outcomes.

The North Pacific Rim, specifically northern Japan and the west coast of North America, is our regional focus. On the basis of our research on the past and present through archaeological, historical, paleoenvironmental, ethnographical and ecological studies, this project also points to the future as we aim at developing implementation and public outreach programs as well as presenting policy proposals for future generations. The core of this project constitutes not only the interdisciplinary approach of collaboration with researchers from other fields, but also the transdisciplinary approach of closely working with a wide range of stakeholders linked to the research objective, including the indigenous people, local residents, farmers, fishers and members of NPOs.

The project involves 81 members including 35 members from abroad. Many of them conduct the world’s most advanced and ambitious research in various environment-related fields. One of them is Prof. Miguel Altieri at University of California, Berkeley who was at RIHN as a Visiting Research Fellow in May 2016 and actively participated in the exchange of opinions with farmers and researchers in Japan (Photo). Another is Prof. Fritjof Capra who is known for his famous book “The Tao of Physics” (Photo). It is always a pleasure to be able to engage in discussions with such freethinking scholars regardless of differences in academic disciplines.

My dream is to develop a consensus to counter the monoculturization of food production and resultant large-scale environmental breakdown through these interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and international discussions. Albeit there are differences in language and culture, researchers grow to understand one another once we work together, and are able to disregard minor inconveniences. RIHN is such a place that makes this possible.