TRENDS IN ARCHAEOLOGY IN JAPANJomon Period
NAKAMURA Kosaku1A major trend in the past few years of Jomon period study is the conceptual
reexamination of “Jomon,” such as its ranges in time and space, periodical divisions
within the Jomon period, differences between eastern and western Japan, and so on,
as was represented in YAMADA Yasuhiro’s Tsukurareta Jomon Jidai (Created JomonPeriod). Especially ﬁscal 2015 saw publication of featured articles on issues regarding
the beginning of the Jomon period in two major commercial archaeological journals
Archaeology Quarterly and The Archaeological Journal. Also, ANZAI Masahito’s
Jomonjin no Seikatsu Sekai (The World of the Jomon People) is a general information
book based on a historical view that each phase, divided by some climate changes, shows
ﬂuctuations of cultural/social structures within the Jomon period, with well summarizedﬁelds such as environmental and social factors in recent Jomon period study.
There is a controversy on methodology of spiritual culture study. TANIGUCHI
Yasuhiro edited featured articles on stone rods that are the largest ritual tools uniqueto the Jomon period, and while he pointed out the existence of three viewpoints:
1) objective description, 2) extraction of patterns and etic explanation, and 3) emicinterpretation to Jomon people; he argued that it takes subjective judgement to categorize
and classify stone rods with various utilizations even in pursuit of objectivity, anddetailed observation of use and excavated situations are necessary. This poses an issue
concerning all artifacts, not limited to stone rods. On the other hand, OSHIMA Naoyuki
interpreted all Jomon artifacts and features as symbolization of the moon, water,uteruses, snakes, and so on in Jomonjin no Sekaikan (World Views of Jomon People),based on theories by Eliade and others. While his efforts to explain from a uniﬁedviewpoint thoroughly should be evaluated, enough explanation was not given in someparts. TAKAHASHI Ryuzaburo gave featured articles on ethnoarchaeology in Kodai
Vol. 138, trying to introduce new viewpoints into Jomon study.
Fiscal 2015 continued to see many examples of a study style to discuss regional
relationships by classiﬁcation and organization of various data. For stone tool study,
distribution of Aotora stones from the Hidaka Mountains in Hokkaido and regional
1 c/o Kokugakuin Tochigi Junior College, 608 Hirai-cho, Tochigi City, Tochigi 328–8588, Japan(knakamura@kokugakuintochigi.ac.jp)

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JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 5 (2017): 59–60

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typology of stone arrows were examined. For pottery study, there were works on rareand symbolic pottery types such as spouted vessels and vessels with unusually shaped
feet, in addition to deep bowls which are used as the standard for chronology. Clay
analysis of pottery is also important.
There were many studies on environmental data and resource utilization. YONEMOTO
Shiori examined stress markers on human bones. KUWABATA Mitsuhiro organized
study of the inﬂuence of Kikai Akahoya eruption comprehensively. KAMIJO Nobuhikodiscussed plant processing tools systematically, based on classiﬁcation of archaeological
data and added experiments. Other than the above mentioned, accumulation of results
is seen in identiﬁcation of seed marks by analysis of starch remains and replication
methods, carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on carbonized substances, and so on.
HABU Junko discussed the possibility of social destruction due to excessive reliance on
plants.
Characteristics of ﬁscal 2015 were the increase of various Jomon enthusiasts among thegeneral public as seen in clay ﬁgurine guidebooks, cookie shaped potshards, popularity
votes on clay ﬁgurine characters, as well as free magazines and modern art with Jomon
themes and so on.

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