Excavation Report of the Yamashita-cho Cave Site, Naha-shi, Okinawa

Mortality profiles of late Pleistocene deer remains of Okinawa Island: evidence from the Hananda-Gama cave and Yamashita-cho cave I sites

“…In Takai (1975), the deer specimens are reported as deriving from layers "5" and "6," with a greater number of specimens attributed to layer "5." This contradicts Takamiya et al (1975a) (summarized after the second excavation in [1968][1969] who state that most of the deer fossils derive from layer VI. According to Takamiya (1967Takamiya ( , 1968, there appears to have been some initial uncertainty in stratigraphy, with the earlier reports (of the first excavation conducted in 1962) recognizing only five layers.…”

“…Layer VI contained a large number of deer fossils (Takamiya et al, 1975a, b). A radiocarbon date of 32100 ± 1000 years BP (TK-78) was obtained on charcoal sampled from layer III (Takamiya et al, 1975a). The deer remains were assigned to Metacervus (Cervus) astylodon by Takai (1975), but some of them are Dicrocerus sp.…”

“…There is some inconsistency in the descriptions of the C. astylodon bearing layers between Takamiya et al (1975a) and Takai (1975). In Takai (1975), the deer specimens are reported as deriving from layers "5" and "6," with a greater number of specimens attributed to layer "5."…”

“…According to Takamiya (1967Takamiya ( , 1968, there appears to have been some initial uncertainty in stratigraphy, with the earlier reports (of the first excavation conducted in 1962) recognizing only five layers. We suspect that much of Takai's (1975) layer "5" deer fossils actually came from layer VI of the revised stratigraphy (Takamiya, 1968;Takamiya et al, 1975a). Therefore, we conducted an analysis of relative dating using bone fluorine content in order to clarify this uncertainty.…”

Pleistocene human remains from Shiraho-Saonetabaru Cave on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, Japan, and their radiocarbon dating

“…From Yamashita-cho Cave 1, which yielded infant femur and tibia, a radiocarbon age of 32100 ± 1000 BP on charcoal from the upper layer was obtained; this is frequently referred as one of the oldest dates of human occupation in Japan (Kobayashi et al, 1971;Takamiya et al, 1975a). In the case of Minatogawa, two radiocarbon dates of 18250 ± 650 and 16600 ± 300 BP on two chunks of charcoal recovered near human remains are interpreted as the period of human occupation there (Kobayashi et al, 1974;Suzuki and Hanihara, 1982).…”