Researching the Landscape History of Oceania's Atolls: Weaving Together the Intertwined History of People and Nature

My specialty is Oceanic archaeology. My primary research field comprises the coral reef islands scattered between 10 degrees north and south of the equator.

During excavations, I dig small, two-meter-square pits. They are at most two meters deep, as that is where groundwater begins to seep in. A cross-section of the strata is a veritable history of the island. While getting excited about artifacts such as the sand and gravel layers composed of coral and foraminifera, the remains of hearths made by prehistoric islanders, and the shell fishhooks they left behind, I would look up to find the island's children peering in. It was then that I truly realized that the lives of people today are built upon a ground surface where history has accumulated. This inspired the idea of an intertwined history of nature and humanity—how people have lived within the island's nature and how they have modified it. From this, a new perspective of "landscape history" emerged, which seeks to provide a comprehensive history of how the current landscape was created.

The islands of Oceania are now facing the problem of sea-level rise due to global warming, and the media often reports on the submersion crisis at Funafuti Atoll (Tuvalu). However, are all atolls facing the same level of crisis? In fact, our landscape history research has revealed for the first time that Funafuti Atoll was inherently vulnerable to sea-level rise and climate change. By examining the formation processes of seemingly similar landscapes, we find that some islands are fragile for human habitation while others are resilient. When considering island-specific countermeasures to sea-level rise, detailed landscape history research should have much to contribute.

I hope to further develop my research on landscape history and make it a distinctive feature of Keio's Major in Archaeology and Ethnology . The core research method is geoarchaeology, which links earth science and archaeology. Our laboratory is also equipped with instruments rare in the humanities, such as elemental analyzers and electron microscopes, which are powerful tools for analyzing microscopic artifacts.

I am also currently involved in " Coral Reef Science ," a field established in response to the issue of global warming. In this interdisciplinary project, selected as a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), I collaborate with researchers from a more diverse range of fields than ever before—including earth science, systems engineering, biology, and chemistry—to explore new models for the coexistence of coral reefs and humans. Dialogue with researchers from different fields is not easy, but this is also one of my major challenges.