"Ancient Jomon of Japan", summary of Chapter 5

Author: * Aria Murasaka - 10 Posts on this thread out of 824 Posts sitewide.
Date: Jul 8, 2007 - 09:24

Chapter 5

This is a a summary of Chapter 5 of Habu Jinko, "Ancient Jomon of Japan", Cambridge Press, 2004. It is not meant to be an original work (although it is written in my own words), but merely to sum up the information found in the part described and serve as reference for further research. This is part of my work towards a comprehensive, original article on Jomon culture

Unlike settlements and subsistence patterns, little has been published on mortuary and ceremonial patterns in English, and rarely has the related data been presented within a theoretical framework. However, of late, new developments in Western archaeology have lead to citing the Jomon culture, presenting it as a complex hunter-gatherers society with moderate heredity of social inequality during Early and Middle Jomon, and strong heredity and the beginning of social stratification during Late and Final Jomon; Japanese archaeologists traditionally see the Jomon society as a mostly egalitarian one

Up to the 1980s, the main framework, usually implicit, was the Marxist one, following in the step of leader archaeologist Wajima. It put the emphasis on the organization of labor (between men and women, bodies with or without "permanent" shell ornaments, which would have prevented heavy work as they would have been easily broken), kinship structures (the similarities in the burials, the - supposed - strong mother-child relationship, the repartition of the burials reflecting the division between dwellings) and postmarital residence. Also, while extensively described and listed, very little about ritual features and artefacts interpretation has been offered

The most commonly found ritual artefact is the clay figurine; while some of them are clearly female, other look asexual and could therefore well have represented a male as well, although no figurine found so far could be clearly be identified as such. Because those figurines are rarely recovered intact, it has been suggested that they were intentionally broken, but that theory hasn't been proven yet. Clay figurines date all the way back to the Incipient Jomon, but their number remains small, and their forms rather abstract, until the Middle Jomon; at that point, they can be found in abundance, some, like in Chubu, finely made, while Late and Final Jomon present us with a variety of styles. Peaks of clay figurines production are reach in different regions at different times. Stone figurines were also made; while some are very similar to clay figurines and probably serve the same purpose, others are greatly different and may have played a different symbolic role. All in all, as in other cultures, they are believed to mostly represent the earth and/or fertility, same as the stone rods and "swords", although the latter are associated with male representation, while some consider them material for hunting rituals. The bigger stone rods were up to one meter long and are dated Middle to Late Jomon, while the smaller ones date from the Late to Final Jomon

Other ritual artefacts were clay masks, dating from the Late and Final Jomon also. They were found on more than 20 sites, most situated in northern Tohoku. Other artefacts believed to have been involved in rituals are clay and stone tablets, as well as other peculiarly shaped items, all mostly found in the north of Japan. Ornamental beands and jewelry is also pretty common, both in the context of burials and under other circumstances

There is evidence of both primary and secondary burials, but the primary ones are far more numerous, and are found mostly in the form of pit burials; flasked-shaped ones are believed to have been storage pits, which we know existed in that form, later "recycled" for burials.. Few skeletons were discovered, due to the acidic nature of the soil in most of Japan. Pit burials were either regrouped in clusters or followed specific patterns sometimes in concentric circles, with the burial pits close to the center, surrounded by raised-floor buildings, pit dwellings and finally, forming the outermost circle would be the storage pits; burial pits could also form rows in other settlements. It could occasionally happen for them to be marked by stone arrangements or markers; other in the Late Jomon were lined with stone slabs, particularly in northern Tohoku, and may have been secondary burials. Skeletons may also sometimes have been placed in pit dwellings and have been associated with shell-middens, mostly in Middle and Late Jomon in western Kanto; infants, usually less than one year old, could be burried in burial jars as well. Secondary burials present themselves in the form of collective burial pits and were relatively frequent in the Late and Final Jomon in Kanto and Tohoku; in the latter region were also found jar burials for adults which were also secondary and dating from the Late Jomon. Secondary burials seem to have been more frequent in Western Japan were they were in use since the Initial Jomon at least; burials were also common and could be associated with stone features

Burials suggest the beginnings of social inequities. That was notably observed by Oki Nakamura through his analysis of grave goods. Incipient to late Initial Jomon see mostly everyday goods (which remain the most common throughout the Jomon) in about a quarter of burials taken in account. While the percentage remains the same from the end of the Initial to the Middle Jomon, items labelled "exquisite" become more frequent, in particular in the Late and Final Jomon. Differences in the number of those exquisite goods from one burial to the other increase as well, which would tend to indicate that a certain number of individuals were priviledged, at least in this matter. It is also interesting to note that larger cemetries don't necessarily hint at an increase of the population of a site, but could also indicate a shift in the purpose of a site over time

The most common ceremonial feature of the Jomon are the stone circle and other stone monuments. They were quite rare until the second half of the Early Jomon, when their number increased significantly and continued to do so during the Middle Jomon, all the way to the Late and Final Jomon. Some of the stone circles must have been very labor-intensive; stone works in Hokkaido also present "kanjo dori", that is burials (comprising one or several burials pits, the number influencing, obviously, the size) with circular embankments, typical of the Late Jomon. The comparatively high percentage of burial pits comprising exquisite goods may mean that people burried in these structures had some kind of special status

Another labor-instensive feature were the earthen mounds; artefacts found there suggest these places were in use for some length of time - one or two Jomon periods. Features using wooden posts were also quite common

Overall, it can be said that the two major periods of change were from Early to Middle Jomon and from Middle to Late Jomon, each time providing a greater diversity in the feature which may imply a growing stratification within the population and social inequality, even if it remains quite small throughout the Jomon period