Dr. Morgan Pitelka, Director of the Asian Studies Center at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, researches the history and material culture of the long sixteenth century (or what is often called the shift from medieval to early modern) in Japan. He is particularly interested in the history of the samurai, the history of tea culture, the history of ceramics, and the methodology of material culture studies. His first research project focused on the Raku ceramic tradition, which originated in the 1570s, thrived in the context of early modern tea culture, and continues to be widely practiced in Japan and around the world today. This project involved examination of ceramics in American and Japanese museums and private collections as well as study of documentary evidence including letters, tea diaries, gazetteers, early modern books, manuscripts, and collection registers. One goal was to illuminate how tradition is constructed, perpetuated, and packaged over time, and how sixteenth-century practices and products continue to inform debates about national identity in Japan today. His second research project focused on the role of material culture—particularly swords, Chinese art, and falcons—in the life and career of the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and a useful case study of the long sixteenth century. His third research project examines politics and daily life in the medieval castle town of Ichijôdani (near present-day Fukui), capital of the Asakura house of warlords, using archaeological remains and documentary evidence. This town was destroyed in 1573 by Oda Nobunaga, first of the so-called “Three Unifiers” of the sixteenth century. His project examines the tension between the top-down, political world view articulated in Asakura official documents, and the more textured markers of daily life—and its sudden loss—that emerge from the Ichijôdani excavations.