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For more details on an excavated Yayoi moated settlement, read the detailed report on the Asahi site, Aichi prefecture.
Pages
- 1. Along the Paleolithic Path
- A love affair with rock
- In the news: Upper Paleolithic humans “mined” stone from Mount Takaharayama to produce trapezoid and other stone tools 35,000 years ago
- Stone tool inventory
- Types of Chipped Stone Artifacts
- Stone Age News: Early humans in Japan produced stone tools
- Did Japan’s palaeolithic era begin earlier than thought?
- Ruins of possibly Japan’s oldest settlement on Tanegashima Island show nut-gathering culture began very early
- Suggested field trip: Visit Jomon obsidian island – Kozushima Island
- The puzzle of tracing the origin of the world’s earliest polished stone tools
- Stone Age News: Early humans in Japan produced stone tools
- Types of Chipped Stone Artifacts
- How to choose a stone age home
- Kambayashi iseki: What a Paleolithic campsite looked like
- Large animals rule until 12,000 years ago
- Origins of the Paleolithic People
- Palaeolithic Art in Japan
- Was the New World colonized by the prehistoric people of Japan?
- Ancestors of Ainu people migrated across Beringia carrying HTLV-I virus (subtype A) to the American continent in the Paleolithic era
- Evidence of a Recent Common Ancestry between Native Americans and Indigenous (Siberian-) Altaians … and Japan
- New evidence suggests that the first Americans arrived in at least three waves.
- What went onto Paleolithic plates (what foods they ate)
- A love affair with rock
- 2. Amazing Jomon Japan
- Jomon Cultural Milestones: Ten thousand years is a long time
- Out of Africa to East Asia: Gleaning the genetic tale of origins and migration from our mitochondria
- Origins of the Jomon, Jomon connections with the continent and with today’s Japanese
- Early Japanese belong to the M7 (mtDNA) family of Austronesian Southeast Asia (among other lineages) – source readings, Bibliography
- In the news: Riken study — 2 genetic types of Japanese exist
- Who are the Ainu people?
- Ainu populations share genetic affinities with Nivkhi and other peoples from North Asia including Sakhalin.
- Genetic origins of the Ainu inferred from combined DNA analyses of maternal and paternal lineages.
- In the news: Ainu produce film to tell the story of Tokyo Ainu communities
- Notes and bibliography: The unresolved engima of the northern or southern origins of the Jomon people
- Yomiuri Shimbun reports: Earwax map may show the early distributions and origins of Jomon and Yayoi populations
- Origins of the Jomon, Jomon connections with the continent and with today’s Japanese
- The Mystery at YONAGUNI: Is there a 10,000 year old pyramid and city underwater at Yonaguni?
- Ways of the Jomon World
- A-hunting we will go!
- Boom of the barter trade
- Did the Jomon have a calendar?
- Did the Jomon people go to war?
- Did the Jomon people keep any pets?
- Fashion: clothing and jewellery of Jomon times
- Field Trip! Experience life as a Jomon hunter-gatherer.
- Gone fishing!
- Fishing techniques of the Jomon people may have diffused from fishermen of the Wallacea-Spice Islander / Sundaland-Sahul region
- In the news: Ancient weirs found at Jomon-period site
- In the news: Bones unearthed near Okinoshima show that dolphins were being fished for about 1,000 years in the early Jomon period between about 6,500 B.C. and 7,500 B.C off Tateyama coast of Chiba prefecture
- Jomon architecture
- Jomon crafts and what they were for
- Ritual use of phallic objects or stones alongside of female figurines increased during the Middle Jomon period
- The all-natural Jomon toilet
- The Jomon diet
- The Jomon Hearth and Home
- The Jomon world of ceremony and ritual
- Travel Jomon-style
- Views on the Jomon village
- What happened when a Jomon villager died?
- What was the climate and environment like ?
- 3. The Yayoi Years
- Advent of Agriculture and the Rice Revolution
- Every pot tells a story
- Irrigated rice culture appeared in 930 BCE in northern Kyushu
- Life in a Wet Rice Farming Village
- Earliest origins of rice: South Korea vs. China? China vs. India?
- 10,000 year old rice from Shangshan remains, China
- In the news: DNA ‘map’ shows mother of all cultivated rice came from China’s Pearl River
- In the news: Earliest known cultivated rice fields discovered in Zhejiang province, China date to 7,700 years bp
- The Early Rice Project seeks to clarify the origins of Asian rice agriculture
- Field trip: Views of the Otsu, a fortified Yayoi village
- Growth and prosperity of a prehistoric village: Yoshinogari
- War!!! Fortified fiefdoms and moat-making activity
- Yayoi architectural styles
- Earliest origins of rice: South Korea vs. China? China vs. India?
- Queen Himiko and the mystery of Yamatai-koku
- Etymology of ‘Wa’, ‘Yamatai’ and ‘Nippon’
- In the news: Excavations of Makimuku ruins in Nara expected to reveal much about nation’s first true city and Himiko’s Yamatai
- The Yamatai Puzzle: Where were Himiko’s headquarters?
- When Japan entered the Iron & Bronze Age
- Lifestyle and Society of the land of Wa
- Continental connections and international relations
- In the news: Chinese writing was first introduced during Yayoi period
- In the news: More recent finds of Lelang pottery finds on Honshu from the Yayoi Period prove Chinese sphere of influence included proto-historic and ancient Japan
- Study of vermillion found in 1st- and 2nd- century burials proves Yayoi people traded with China
- Days of mourning and ways of burying
- Field trip – visit a megalithic dolmen site
- Field Trip: Ikegami-Sone ruins and Osaka Prefectural Museum of Yayoi Culture
- In the news: Discovery of one of the largest Yayoi burial mounds in Hiyoshigaoka Ruins in the town of Kaya, Kyoto dating to Yayoi period
- In the news: Mid-Yayoi (2nd century) stone burial mound uncovered at the Narishige site in Shirotori, Kagawa
- Why were some of the Yayoi coffins boat-shaped?
- Entering the realm of rice, ritual and religion
- Magic, superstitions, religious rituals of the Yayoi culture
- Bibliography: Reading sources for a comparative look at shamanism in North and East Asia
- Restored Yayoi shrine opened to public
- Study of Yayoi-period stone rods shows continuity of Jomon lineage in their morphology suggesting a Jomon-Yayoi transition that saw very rapid fusion and co-existence of two different Jomon and Yayoi groups
- Yayoi clay figurine head excavated from Kambara ruins of Soja city in Okayama prefecture
- Magic, superstitions, religious rituals of the Yayoi culture
- In the news: Carp farming during the Yayoi Period
- Trade and Tribal Wealth and Status
- Continental connections and international relations
- Origins of the Yayoi people
- A 2007 study found that most Japanese to belong to three major Y-DNA clades, C, D, or O.
- Dead men tell no tales … what were the Yayoi people like?
- Finding on dialects casts new light on the origins of the Japanese People
- In the news: DNA shows origin of most Japanese linked to migrants from mainland
- Making sense of DNA data and the origins of the Japanese
- Yayoi linked to Yangtze area: DNA tests reveal similarities to early wet-rice farmers
- Advent of Agriculture and the Rice Revolution
- 4. Towering tumuli of the Kofun era
- 3rd century: Powerful priest kings of Yamato and sacred Mt Miwa
- 4th century: The Legend of Prince Yamatotakeru: the path he took and Yamato’s expansion
- 5th century: The rise of royal estates
- Book “Ancient Japan Archaeology for State Formative Processes” suggests early nation state was already formed in Japan in the latter half of the 5th century, which developed and evolved into the Ritsuryo nation, much earlier than the widely believed 7th century
- In the news: Ancient horse trappings dug up at burial mound
- When did horses arrive in Japan? When were they domesticated?
- In the news: Excavations at the Motodaka Yumi no Ki Iseki reveal Kofun period iron tools and engineering and irrigation-works
- In the news: Roman glass beads uncovered in Japanese 5th century nobleman’s tomb near Kyoto
- Kofun period people sought after shell bracelets and amulets from the southern islands
- Power and warfare
- The first Japanese state emerged in the fifth century…says Anthropologist Gina Barnes
- Uji clans, titles and the organization of production and trade
- Village settlement patterns: the homestead emerges
- In the news: Dendrochronological research establishes that the Kofun Period emerged 100 years earlier than previously thought
- Types of tumuli and their evolution
- Designs of the decorated tombs – what did they mean?
- Did keyhole-shaped tombs originate in the Korean peninsula?
- In the news: Discovery of boat-shaped haniwa shows belief of souls transported to the afterlife by ship
- In the news: Sixth century tomb’s ‘haniwa’ is two-faced first
- Recommended field trip: Sakitama ancient burial mounds
- The emergence and development of stone houses, stone shelves along with decorated kofun and other archaeological elements of the Kikuchi River region of north Kumamoto Prefecture, spreading across Kyushu
- Tomb treasures of the ancient tumuli
- Who lies entombed within?
- 5. Buddhism blossoms in Asuka
- How Buddhism took root in Japan
- Civil war breaks out! Prince Otomo vs. Prince Oama
- Statesman Prince Shotoku, legend or real national hero?
- Taika reforms entrench the emperor’s place at the apex of the state
- Tales of Mystic Mountain: The Legend of the Levitating Monk of Mt Horaiji
- Tenji and Temmu’s ritsuryo religion: “there is only one imperial way”
- Reviewing the ruins of the Asuka-kyo and Fujiwara-kyo, the first imperial capitals of Japan
- Ancient stone sluiceway of Asuka
- Architecture of Asuka: palaces & pagodas
- Asuka architecture: Yamadadera Temple ruins
- Defense projects of Dazaifu: The “Water Fortress”
- In the news: Horyuji Temple’s timbers dated to before the fire of 670
- In the news: Living quarters of Asuka Kiyomihara Palace discovered among Asuka ruins
- In the news: Nara dig yields oldest accession ruins to date
- Asuka’s burial practices: from stone tombs to cremation
- In the news: Ancient Kazumayama tomb discovery suggests Korean Paekche kingdom’s royalty may have fled to Japan
- Preserving ruins of an ancient era /Asukamura maintains cultural heritage while looking to the future
- The art of Asuka
- In the news: Manichaeism cosmology painting found
- Manyoshu poems and other legacies of Asuka
- They played “keepy uppy” or kemari in the Asuka period (through till today)
- How Buddhism took root in Japan
- 6. Nara Period nurtures Chinese culture
- Nara capital built in the shadow of the Chinese empire & under the influences of the Silk Road
- Ganjin & Gyoki: Monks on a Mission
- In the news: 13-layered Buddhist pagoda in Sakai, Osaka has been restored
- In the news: Discovery of possible remains of part of the West Palace of Nagaoka-kyo (Nara period)
- In the news: Nara celebrates 1,300th Heijyokyo anniversary
- In the news: Silk road Islamic ceramic fragments excavated from Nara’s Saidaiji site are oldest finds in Japan
- Nara Court and Ceremony and the flowering of the Tempyo Culture
- Tempyo arts
- Early Shosoin, Isonokami warehouse and shrine architecture may have had Altaic or other Central Asian influences
- In the news: Shoso-in and Emperor Shomu
- Musical instruments of the Nara Period
- The construction of the colossal and cosmic Buddha of Nara
- The discovery of a multitude of multi-purpose mokkan
- Todai-ji and Emperor Shomu’s “Three Treasures”
- Field trip: Ashura (Buddhist sculpture from Kofukuji, Nara period) at the Tokyo National Museum, Ueno
- In the news: Lost sacred swords of Todaiji recovered
- In the news: Newly excavated ruins of 8th century Shin-Yakushiiji as large as largest existing wooden structure today
- The history of incense since the Nara Period
- Treasures of the world’s oldest and most visited museum – the Shosoin
- Nara capital built in the shadow of the Chinese empire & under the influences of the Silk Road
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- 1. Along the Paleolithic Path
