Kohei Tamura

University of Bristol | UB · Department of Engineering Mathematics

The present study examines the 3-dimensional data of human crania from the Yayoi period (800 BC to AD 250) of the Japanese archipelago by geometric morphometrics to investigate demic diffusion patterns. This is the first study on the Yayoi crania using their 3D data and geometric morphometrics with a much larger number of skeletal remains outside o...

The evolution of altruism in human societies has been intensively investigated in social and natural sciences. A widely acknowledged recent idea is the “parochial altruism model,” which suggests that inter- group hostility and intragroup altruism can coevolve through lethal intergroup conflicts. The current article critically examines this idea by...

SfM/MVS photogrammetry has received increasing attention due to its convenience, broadening the range of its applications into archaeology and anthropology. Because the accuracy of SfM/MVS depends on photography, one important issue is that incorrect or low-density point clouds are found in 3D models due to poor overlapping between images. A system...

3-dimensional data have recently attracted many archaeologists’ attention because of their various kinds of merits. The present study compared 3-dimensional data and traditional 2-dimensional data, especially measured drawings, and examined their merits and demerits. We obtained 3-dimensional data of Ongagawa pottery, which has relatively uniform a...

3D measurement using SfM/MVS (Structure from Motion/Multiview Stereo) and laser scanners has become increasingly popular in archaeology. Especially, the quality (i.e., precision and/or accuracy) of 3D models by SfM sometimes varies depending on target objects, measurers, and equipment, and so quality control is one of the important problems for SfM...

This article quantifies the morphological variations of the Ongagawa pottery of the Early Yayoi period of the Japanese archipelago to clarify its spatiotemporal similarities and differences. We focus on and quantify items of pottery from the birthplace of Ongagawa pottery, i.e., the Itazuke and Sasai sites, and from the Tamura, Ayaragi-go, and Yano...

The causes of prehistoric inter-group violence have been a subject of long-standing debate in archaeology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Although population pressure has been considered as a major factor, due to the lack of available prehistoric data, few studies have directly examined its effect so far. In the present study, we used data on...

The dispersal processes of anatomically modern humans in Asia during the late Middle to early Upper Paleolithic periods have been a focus of intensive research in recent years through interdisciplinary approaches including genetic, paleoanthropological, and archeological studies. However, sparse datasets, often only available from limited time-spac...

It has been commonly claimed that prehistoric warfare in Japan began in the Yayoi period. Population increases due to the introduction of agriculture from the Korean Peninsula to Japan resulted in the lack of land for cultivation and resources for the population, eventually triggering competition over land. This hypothesis has been supported by the...

Unlike other primates, human foragers have an egalitarian society. Therefore, the evolution of egalitarian behaviour has been the subject of long-standing debate in a wide variety of disciplines. A recent hypothesis states that a social control against potentially dominant individuals played an important role in the emergence of an egalitarian soci...

Population dynamics in urban and rural areas are different. Understanding factors that contribute to local population changes has various socioeconomic and political implications. In the present study, we use population census data in Japan to examine contributors to the population growth of residential clusters between years 2005 and 2010. The dat...

Unlike other primates, human foragers have an egalitarian society. Therefore, the evolution of egalitarian behaviour has been the subject of long-standing debate in a wide variety of disciplines. A recent hypothesis states that a social control against potentially dominant individuals played an important role in the emergence of an egalitarian soci...

Spatiotemporal patterns of population changes within and across countries have various implications. Different geographical, demographic and econo-societal factors seem to contribute to migratory decisions made by individual inhabitants. Focussing on internal (i.e., domestic) migration, we ask whether individuals may take into account the informati...

The origins and consequences of warfare or large-scale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two different evolutionary models, i.e., parochia...

Understanding patterns and underlying processes of human cultural diversity has been a major challenge in evolutionary anthropology. Recent developments in the study of cultural macro-evolution have illuminated various novel aspects of cultural phenomena at the population level. However, limitations in data availability have constrained previous an...

Whether man is predisposed to lethal violence, ranging from homicide to warfare, and how that may have impacted human evolution, are among the most controversial topics of debate on human evolution. Although recent studies on the evolution of warfare have been based on various archaeological and ethnographic data, they have reported mixed results:...

Electronic supplementary material

Electronic supplementary material

Managerial decision making is likely to be a dominant determinant of performance of teams in team sports. Here we use Japanese and German football data to investigate correlates between temporal patterns of formation changes across matches and match results. We found that individual teams and managers both showed win-stay lose-shift behavior, a typ...

A number of studies have investigated the roles played by individual and social learning in cultural phenomena and the relative advantages of the two learning strategies in variable environments. Because social learning involves the acquisition of behaviours from others, its utility depends on the availability of 'cultural models' exhibiting adapti...

A major goal of anthropology is to understand the forces maintaining cultural variation. Although theoretical studies have proposed various mechanisms that may homogenize cultural diversity, recent empirical studies have suggested that there is considerable within-population cultural variation. In the present study, by analyzing marriage patterns i...

Individual and social learning underpin human cultural diversity and successful expansion into diverse environments. The evolution of social learning has been a subject of active debate: in particular, recent studies considering whether spatial structure favors or disfavors the evolution of social learning have produced mixed results. Here we repor...

Punishment has been deemed as a key to solve the puzzle of the evolution of cooperation. Recent studies have suggested that altruistic punishment may be motivated by preference for social equality (egalitarian punishment). Here we construct individual-based models to investigate the effectiveness of egalitarian punishment in promoting cooperation....

Punishment has been deemed as a key to solve the puzzle of the evolution of cooperation. Recent studies have suggested that altruistic punishment may be motivated by preference for social equality (egalitarian punishment). Here we construct individual-based models to investigate the effectiveness of egalitarian punishment in promoting cooperation....

Evolution of communication is conceptualized as a coevolutionary process in which evolution of signaler and that of receiver occur in an interdependent manner. Three classes of communication, mutualistic, altruistic, and exploiting, are distinguished depending on who gains a benefit or suffers a cost from successful communication. Communication is...