Projects

Current work of the 4th R-GIRO project focuses on strengthening resilience against disasters and food crises in human history. Towards this goal I have been examining alternate methods of identifying population changes in the past utilizing pottery records in archaeological reports. With a better understanding of past population dynamics we can better understand how societies and populations reacted to disasters in the past. I have also been analyzing pottery from the Tsuzuraozaki lakebed site for signs of landslides in the area based on the presence and orientation of iron deposits present on the pottery.

In 2022 the Stonehenge Visitor Center opened a new exhibit that introduced visitors to several stone circles in Japan, many or which had recently been inscribed as World Heritage Sites as part of the broader Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan inscription. In a collaborative project with the Sainsbury Institute I made several 3D scans and 360 tours of stone circle sites related to the exhibit as well as capturing video footage of the sites to help contextualize these sites in the broader surrounding landscapes. The materials from this project are still being utilized for further public outreach projects.

As a member of the collaborative "Integrative Bioarchaeological Studies on Human Prehistory in the Japanese Archipelago" project I am examining new ways of identifying changes in population dynamics during the Jomon period. One half of my research involves using an architectural energetics approach to pithouse designs to identify changes in mobility based on the intended use life of pithouse dwellings. The second part of my project involves a GIS approach to utilizing geographical features to estimate the likelihood of archaeological sites in an area and identify possible archaeological oversampling or undersampling of areas in the process.