Posted on 03/29/2004 11:58:24 AM PST by blam
Jomon fishing site discovered
Yomiuri Shimbun
Bones unearthed near Okinoshima in Tateyama show that between about 6,500 B.C. and 7,500 B.C., dolphins were being fished off the coast of what now is part of Chiba Prefecture.
As well as indicating that dolphins were being fished for about 1,000 years in the early Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.), objects found at the site gave researchers clues about the natural environment 8,000 years ago.
"We found lots of valuable data, as well as learning lots about the natural environment during the early Jomon period, when the climate was gradually warming up after the last ice age," said Prof. Seiichi Yanagisawa of Chiba University's faculty of letters, who led the research.
Although the area excavated was only about 20 square meters, a number of artifacts dating from the middle of the early Jomon period were unearthed, including 8,000-year-old earthenware, an obsidian arrowhead and stone implements used for stripping bones and skin. The remains of an early Jomon fire also were uncovered.
Bones apparently belonging to a fully grown dolphin that measured about 2.5 meters in length also were found mingled with the man-made items.
"There is what looks like an underwater valley in Tateyama Bay in which Jomon fishermen probably used to corner dolphins before catching them," Yanagisawa said.
"The bones we dug up probably belonged to a dolphin that had been cut up after being caught in that way," he added.
Excavation work on the Okinoshima site, which was jointly carried out by Awa Museum in Tateyama and the archeology department of Chiba University, started on April 30 last year and continued until May 6.
Researchers are planning to carry out a second dig on the same site this autumn to get an even more detailed picture of life there 8,000 years ago.
The dig was only possible because the area of Tateyama Bay around Okinoshima, which used to be an island, was joined to the mainland by the Genroku Kanto Earthquake of 1703 and the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which caused the ground level to rise, according to Yanagisawa.
It is rare to be able to excavate Jomon sites of archeological interest that were near the sea during that period because most sites of that kind are now beneath sea level, the professor said.
"There are lots of Jomon remains around Tateyama because ground that used to be below sea level is now above sea level," said Tozo Okamoto, who is also a professor in Chiba University's faculty of letters, and who has investigated a separate set of remains about two kilometers southeast of Okinoshima.
"From a second dig, we should get an even clearer picture of what daily life and the natural environment were like during the Jomon period," he said.
The Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather of Bill Dance.
No. I think the Jomon pottery is the oldest ever found.
Some Interesting pottery details here:
Jomon Venus Figure
That's an Ainu Guy.
Yes. I expect you have seen the below posting before.
The Prehistoric Archaeology of Japan
Now why I'm curious about the date is because I'd heard of corded items in European archaeology--here's a site mentioning a conference which seems to explore that parallelism:
ARCHAEOLOGIES OF CORDAGE ACROSS EURASIA
Organisers:
Simon Kaner (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Norwich, United Kingdom)
Noriyuki Yamamoto (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures Norwich, United Kingdom)
This session commemorates the 90th anniversary of the death of one of the founding fathers of Japanese archaeology, Tsuboi Shogoro, in St Petersburg in 1913. Tsuboi was a pioneer of the scientific study of pottery in archaeology.. This session will investigate how pottery studies, of which Tsuboi was a pioneer in Japan, have shaped archaeological discourse across Eurasia. Along with other scholars of his generation, including Hamada Kosaku who studied seriation with Flinders Petrie, Tsuboi was instrumental in adapting Western archaeological concepts for a Japanese context.
The use of cordage to decorate pottery vessels is one of the defining characteristics of the Jomon period in Japanese prehistory. Cord-marking is also, however, a major attribute of pottery decoration across much of Eurasia, in particular in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, visible in the Corded Ware cultures that stretch from the Volga to western Europe, including Beakers. This session brings together specialists from Europe, Russia and Japan, to consider the many dimensions of cordage and cord-marked pottery in prehistory.
Papers will consider the technology, symbolism, context, formation processes and function of cordage and cord-marked pottery across Europe and will provide an unprecedented opportunity to place the cord-marked pottery tradition of Jomon Japan in a Eurasian perspective. The session will also address the ways in which European archaeological method and theory have influenced archaeology outside Europe, taking as the focus the changing interpretations of types and technologies and their relationship to prehistoric peoples and cultures.
Me too. You'll find the same dating situation with the Olmec.
Jomon Pottery Early Period
This style of bowl was common in western Kyüshü during the Early Jömon period. The geometric pattern is extremely similar to the patterns used in Korean pottery from the Pusan area.
James Chatters (of Kennewick Man fame), in his book Ancient Encounters speculates that the genes that produced Kennewick Man also produced the Asians and Europeans. If Cord Pottery is oldest in Japan and is also found later in Europe, this may be some support for his speculation? Europeans were 'hatched' in Asia?
"The world's earliest pottery may be from Japan where, at Odai Yamamoto on northern Honshu, shards have been found C14 dated to 13,000 BP, calibrated 16,000 years old.""
That one strikes me as highly significant:
Cian MacFhiarais, "Venus Figurines in Prehistoric Europe: The Emergence of Art and Belief"
Although there are reported dates for Venus figurines ranging from 29,000-14,000 years B.P, by far the majority of the Venus figurines appear between 23,000 and 25,000 B.P (Gamble, 1981:97, cited in Dickson, 1990), at a period that is referred to in Eastern Europe as the Gravettian and in Western Europe as the Perigordian. Dickson suggests that the remarkable similarity of the figurines over these vast geographical areas points to these two archaeological traditions being part of the same extended cultural province (1990:65).
Or--another possibility that occurs to me--it could be that the European Cord Pottery tradition is older than previously thought and may descend from the same period as the Venus figurines, just as the Cord Pottery and Venus figurines appear together in Japan. BTW, that reminds me of something you posted a few months back:
Prehistoric Oriental 'Venus' Carved On Cliff Discovered In Ningxia
"They compared archeological findings in China's Xinglonggou Relics Site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, also popularly known as "China's first primitive village", and findings in Japanese sites from the Neolithic age, about 10,000 to 4,000 years ago
. The cultural exchanges occurred on a route from northeast China through coastal Russian areas to Japan's Hokkaido and Honshu over 7,000 years ago, noted Wang Wei, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences"
I think I dated her.
Perhaps. At some point, 12-15k years ago, the people of Japan were 'cut-off' by the rising waters from the Ice Age end.
Trading and contact by sea would be limited. So, what-ever similarities exist between the Jomon and Europeans likely occurred before the ending of the Ice Age...which would fit with the dates of the European Venus figurines, 23-25k years ago.
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