Jomon Period
- Japanese: 縄文時代 (Joumon Jidai)
The earliest categorized period of Japanese history extending from roughly 8,500 BCE to 300 BCE.[1] The period is named for pottery bearing cord marks[2] from this period. The Jômon period in the Japanese islands may have seen the earliest invention (discovery) of pottery (ceramics) technology in the world.
The majority of Jômon pottery was, of course, quite simple and utilitarian in style and design. However, for a brief period towards the end of the Jômon period, some communities created exceptional vessels with flamboyant flame-like shapes, in a rather impractical design. Wide-eyed doll-like figures known as dôgu are also oft-cited examples of Jômon pottery; typically found broken in particular ways, archaeologists have surmised that these doll-like figures may have played a ritual purpose, being deliberately broken as part of the ritual of activating the object, in order to provide healing, or perhaps some other effect.
The earliest evidence for human habitation in the Japanese archipelago dates to roughly 35,000 years ago; humans might have lived in the islands before that, however. These people were chiefly hunter-gatherers and fishers, who wielded stone tools and are designated as a Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) society. This society gave way to the beginnings of what is termed the Jômon culture with the gradual onset of a variety of developments, chief among them the invention of pottery. The invention of pottery is among the chief characteristics by which archaeologists define the shift from Paleolithic to Neolithic (New Stone Age). Other developments at this time include advancements in trapping technology, and in bows & arrows, expanded use of seafood and marine products, increased size of settlements, and the limited beginnings of agricultural cultivation.
Culture, lifestyles, technology, and societal organization were not uniform across the archipelago, nor across the Jômon period, however. While some of the largest and most numerous settlements have been found in central and northern Honshû, sites associated with the Jômon culture appear throughout the archipelago, from Hokkaidô to the Ryukyus. Archaeologist Richard Pearson describes the period as a "large loosely integrated cultural complex."[3] Along the coasts, salmon and shellfish, along with freshwater fish, were a major part of the diet, along with venison, tubers, and other plants; in other parts, edible nuts and other forest foods, both plant and animal, were prominent. Tools were still made chiefly of wood and stone, but now included a wider range of objects, including canoes, a variety of fishing nets and hooks, shovels, and pit traps; many communities also made use of domesticated dogs.
By around 7000 BCE, people were first living in underground, or above-ground, dwellings, while by around 5000 BCE, settlements grew more set and permanent, and larger, with many people living in pit dwellings made of wood, thatch, and/or earth. Large communal storehouses came to be constructed at, or as, the centers of villages.
The end of the Jômon is marked by the introduction of rice cultivation, quite possibly by a different people coming into the archipelago from outside, settling there, and taking over (or intermarrying into the Jômon population), establishing a new mode of society. This new period is called the Yayoi period.
| Previous Period Paleolithic |
Jômon Period | Following Period Yayoi Period |
References
- Conrad Schirokauer, et al, A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 6-8.
