Richard J. Pearson


Richard Joseph Pearson is a Canadian archaeologist.
He grew up in Toronto and Oakville, Ontario, and graduated with a bachelor's degree at the University of Toronto in 1960. Richard Pearson studied at the University of Hawaii, and Yale University under K.C. Chang, and received his doctorate in anthropology in 1966. Over his career Pearson’s research interests have included the archaeology of Polynesia and East Asia.
Pearson attended the Summer Field School of the University of Western Ontario at Fort Penetanguishene and the Forget Site in Ontario in 1954 and participated in field survey and excavation with the Royal Ontario Museum,University of Toronto, National Museum of Canada the Bishop Museum and Yale/National Taiwan University from 1955 to 1965. His dissertation research concerned the Ryukyu Islands. He started his career as a professor at the University of Hawaii, excavating at the Bellows Field Archeological Area and Lapakahi Complex in Hawaii. In the 1970s he continued field work in Okinawa. He returned to Canada in 1971 and spent most of his career as a professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Pearson has written, edited, and/or translated a number of important books and journal articles on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean archaeology. Many of these publications depended on the collaboration of his wife, Kazue Miyazaki Pearson. His publications mostly concern East Asian prehistory with a focus on subsistence, trade and exchange, and social and economic organization. Part of his mission has been to make available in English the work of East Asian archaeologists and to show long term historical trends. Areas of research include the Jomon Culture of Japan, the Korean "Bronze Age", Chinese Neolithic cultures,the Ryukyu Islands, and the ancient cities of Osaka and Quanzhou. In 2015 he received a Book Accolade for Ground Breaking Matter from the International Conference of Asian Studies for his book Ancient Ryukyu.

Selected bibliography