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A Prehistoric Maritime Culture of the Okhotsk Sea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Harumi Befu  and
Chester S. Chard
Harumi Befu
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Chester S. Chard
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
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Abstract

This paper analyzes the culture history of the little-known Okhotsk culture and makes suggestions about its relationships with neighboring cultures. The Okhotsk culture is important in understanding the cultural history of the northern Pacific because it shows no affinities with the Ainu and Japanese cultures and has an economy remarkably like that of the more distant Aleut and Eskimo. The Okhotsk culture appears to have historical relationships with cultures in Siberia and Manchuria. The maritime hunting economy of this culture was probably derived from the Eskimo via Bering Sea and the Siberian coast. Other cultural elements, the most noticeable being ceramics, were of mainland origin and served as an influential force in forming Okhotsk culture. Once established on Sakhalin, this culture moved southward along the northeastern coast of Hokkaido, where a secondary and later cultural center developed. Migrations up the Kuriles occurred shortly thereafter. This culture probably flourished for at least a thousand years, beginning in Sakhalin several centuries before Christ and persisting until sometime after A.D. 1000 and possibly until the 17th century in the Kuriles. Several unsolved problems concerning the Okhotsk culture are presented.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , July 1964 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1964

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