Prehistoric Jomon Skulls from the Satohama Shell-Mound in Miyato Island

要旨

A total of 18 human skeletal remains of the Latest Jomon period had been uncovered by the late Prof. H. MATSUMOTO in 1918 and 1919 at the Satohama shell-mound, Miyato Island, Miyagi Prefecture, Tohoku District (Table 1). Of these skeletal remains, seven adult skulls (4 male and 3 female) and one adolescent female skull were measured and described (Table 2 and Table 3).These skulls possessed the following craniological features characteristic of Jomon contemporaries in central and western Honshu: meso- or brachycranic vault, low and broad face with flaring zygoma, rectangular and mesoconchic orbit, low and wide nasal aperture, edge-to-edge bite, and so on.Comparative craniometrical analyses of the male material revealed that the Satohama series were very akin to the Jomon series in the Kanto district and the western half of Honshu, but were considerably different from the Ainu in Hokkaido and the modern Japanese in the Tohoku district (Table 4, Table 5, and Fig. 5).With respect to non-metrical cranial variants, the incidence of the supraorbital foramen was significantly lower, and those of the biasterionic suture trace, parietal notch bone, transverse zygomatic suture trace, mylohyoid bridging, and aural exostosis were significantly higher in the Satohama than in the modern Japanese series (Table 6). It was worthy of particular attention that the metopic suture, ossicle at lambda, interparietal bone, and bipartite zygomatic bone (Os japonicum), all of which were rather rare sutural variations in the modern Japanese series, were observable in the Satohama skulls.Measurements and indices of a male Jomon skull from the Aoshima shell-mound, Minamikata-cho, Miyagi Prefecture were given in Appendix.

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