Welcome to the Jōmon

Early evidence of lacquer, from about 4800 BCE. Photo taken at the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture. https://www.rekihaku.ac.jp

This episode we’ll take you through the beginnings of the Jōmon period, from the Incipient Period, when pottery is just appearing, through the Initial and Early Jōmon periods, when the Jōmon culture really starts to grow into its own, flourishing across the archipelago.

We’ll discuss the changes both in society and in the material culture, as well as the continuance of certain cultural aspects, like dental ablation.

Click here to see an example of dental ablation and dental modification. TW: Pictures of human remains, photos taken at the National Museum of Japanese History, https://www.rekihaku.ac.jp.

This is the first of a multi-part series on Jōmon culture. The next episode we’ll talk about the boom and bust in the Chūbu and Kantō regions during the Middle Jōmon period.

An example of a reconstructed Jomon pit house at Katsusaka, by 小池隆 - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33948665

References

2019 KANZAWA-KIRIYAMA, Hideaki, et al; “Late Jomon male and female genome sequences from the Funadomari site in Hokkaido, Japan.” Anthropological Science, 15 April 2019 (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ase/advpub/0/advpub_190415/_pdf/-char/en)
2016 HOANG, Tony; “Jomon Period.” Ancient History Encylopedia (https://www.ancient.eu/Jomon_Period/)
2002 MIZOGUCHI, Koji; An Archaeological History of Japan: 30,000 B.C. to A.D. 700
2001 ISHIGE, Naomichi; The History and Culture of Japanese Food
1996 IMAMURA, Keiji; Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia
1996 AIKENS, C. Melvin and AKAZAWA, Takeru; “The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Japan and Adjacent Northeast Asia.” In: Straus L.g., Erksen B.V., Erlandson J.M., Yesner D.R. (eds) Humans at the End of the Ice Age: Interdiciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, pp 215-227, Spring, Boston, MA
1988 BARNES, Gina L.; Protohistoric Yamato: Archaeology of the First Japanese State