Okinawa Hunter-Gatherers : The Examination of Hunter-Gatherer Mobility in an Island Context

The islands ofOkinawa provide an ideal opportunity fbr the study oflong terrn changes in hunter-gatherer settlement systems.Despite their small size, limited available resources, and relatively long distance from the nearest 1arge landmass, these islands seem to have been occupied by hunter-gatherers from the late Pleistocene to the late first millemium A.D. Systematic investigation of the prehistory of this region can provide keys to answer various questions that are critical to our understanding ofhunter-gatherer adaptive strategies.This paper focuses on the questions of 1) whether the initial successfu1 colonizers ofthese islands were fbragers or collectors [sensu Binfbrd 1980], and 2) whether the settlement systems changed significantly through time after the initial colonization.Since islands are "natural laboratories," studies ofprehistoric huntergatherers in Okinawa allow us to rigorouslyinvestigate the questions as noted above, which in turn will elucidate pros and cons of Binford's [1980] collector-fbrager model.