Barley (Hordeum vulgare) in the Okhotsk culture (5th-10th century AD) of northern Japan and the role of cultivated plants in hunter-gatherer economies.

This paper discusses archaeobotanical remains of naked barley recovered from the Okhotsk cultural layers of the Hamanaka 2 archaeological site on Rebun Island, northern Japan. Calibrated ages (68% confidence interval) of the directly dated barley remains suggest that the crop was used at the site ca. 440-890 cal yr AD.