| Abstract: |
Archaeological sites at Camp Foster, Okinawa, include ridge-top ruins of Chatan Gusuku, a castle in the portion of the installation in Chatan town that was important in local trade and trade with China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, during the Gusuku Period, the period of state development. The surrounding environment has been so transformed, as a result of bombing during World War II and post-war leveling and fill application, that the site seems to lack a hinterland that could have produced the forest and cultivated goods that are known to have been exported from Okinawa. It is also located well inland from the seacoast, without access to oceangoing ships. Prior to the war, however, the gusuku was coastal, was surrounded by many square kilometres of agricultural fields and forested areas, and was served by a large stream (no longer flowing today) that joined another to form a harbor below the gusuku ridge. Evidence is examined for at least a kilometre of westward progradation along the East China Sea coastline since the Shellmound period, which preceded the Gusuku period, and for former resource areas that could have supported the gusuku.
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