Archaeologists have literally gone potty over Jomon pots since hundreds of thousands of pieces of Jomon pottery turned up in archaeological digs or building construction sites. As pottery was produced in such massive numbers, it became clear that the Jomon people were carrying on a huge industry and weren’t just primitive Stone Age hunters.
Were the Jomon people the inventors of the first pot?
One reason for the interest is that the earliest Jomon pottery sherds are the earliest pottery in the world. Although a few potsherds with equally early dates have turned up in Siberia and in China (Xianrenjiang Cave in Jiangxi), prehistoric pottery in these places were never produced in numbers anywhere near those of the Jomon period.
The beginning of pottery and a semi-settled lifestyle or sedentary life in Japan begins some 13,500 - 15,500 years ago. The Incipient Jomon period, was really a kind of Epi palaeolithic, a palaeolithic era with pottery. From excavated finds, scholars believe that the earliest pottery in Japan (like that in the USSR Maritime province) was produced by riverside hunter fishers who had microlithic blade technology.
Why was the simple and humble pot such an important invention?
People for the first time had non-leaky waterproof container. It could be used to boil, stew or steam food, so they could now eat new kinds of foods – leafy vegetables that would have burnt or disintegrated to nothing over a fire grill, shellfish that opened easily, acorns had their poisons boiled out. Very young children and toothless old people could now eat soft-boiled foods. Food could be stored to tide them over in times when food became scarce. The humble pot improved the lives of the hunter-gatherer immensely.
Artistic and religious expressions
Another reason why scholars and scientists are taken by Jomon pottery is because the beauty, charm and sophistication of much of Jomon pottery is unrivalled in the prehistoric world. The most florid and elaborate pottery were made by people who lived during the Middle Jomon period and who lived in the rugged mountainous interior of Honshu island. The large, highly decorated pots suggest village chiefs competing in lavish feasting.
Despite the fact that all Jomon pottery were hand made and low fired without specially constructed kilns, Jomon potters were very creative – their pots were greatly varied in their shapes and rich ways in which they were decorated. Besides the famous cord-markings (from which the name Jomon was derived), other kinds of decorations included incision, stamping, smoothing, application of strips of clay, sculpturing, and coloring with red or black lacquer.
Jomon pots are greatly varied in their shapes: The most common vessels were deep bowls or jars. But the Jomon also made a lot of pottery with other forms: shallow bowls, vessels with narrow mouths, often with long necks and vessels with spouts. Some of the early pots had a unique shape with a square mouth and flat bottom. There were round and pointed bottomed pots and there were flat bottomed pots. Less common were the lamp-shaped pottery and incense-burner shaped ones.
The Middle Jomon era showed the greatest variety … the many large jars, ewers and drinking bowls are also evidence that brewing had been discovered, whether they drank beverages of grain or fermented wines made from wild grapes.
Jomon pots were decorated in many rich and different ways. Besides the famous cord-markings (from which the name Jomon was derived), there were pots with twill or feathered markings, bean, shell patterns and fingernail-shaped patterns. Other kinds of decorations included incision, stamping, smoothing, application of strips of clay, sculpturing, and coloring with red or black lacquer.
Because they decorated their pottery with complex imagery of humans, animals, and abstract forms, we know that the Jomon people were highly expressive and religious people who believed in the magical and spirit world. Jomon pottery reveals a lot about the Jomon world, and that Jomon beliefs and religion were very rich in symbolism and differed from tribe to tribe and over time.
While many of the earthern pots were made by households, archaeologists also know from recent studies that that some special sites produced pottery and some of these sites acted as communication and distribution centers for other smaller regions. Jomon pottery is found in Ryukyu far to the south as well as on islands distant from the mainland. This means that the Jomon people must have transported their pottery by boats and probably traded them.
What were Jomon pots used for?
Many of the common upright Jomon pots were used for cooking and storage, narrow-necked vessels for steaming, the smaller bowls for serving food and drink, and sometimes Jomon pottery pieces were used simply for display and decorating the home.
Large pots were used by coastal people to evaporate seawater and obtain salt which was traded to groups living inland so that they could make up for the lack of salt in their diet since they ate mostly vegetable foods.
Apart from pots for cooking and storage, pottery ornaments, earrings, and ritual objects were also created. Lamp-shaped pottery, often found together with clay figurines, and often finely made, were likely used for ritual purposes or special ceremonies.
Deep jars were sometimes used as burial containers or funerary jars especially for burying infants and children.
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