Otsuka is a village settlement of the Yayoi Period (300 BC – 300 AD)
The excavated ruins site is located on top of a hill in what is today’s modern Yokohama …
The palisades and battlements can be seen (reconstructed based on the excavated artefacts)
The village people dug ditches and a moat surrounded the fortified village
The need for such intensive labour indicated there may have been intermittent times of strife and tension from raiders or bandits
The villagers inside the fortified village lived in thatched homes not unlike the pit-homes of the earlier Jomon settlements
A closeup of the Yayoi villager’s residence
Inside one of the thatched houses…
This is house is much larger than the others, and may have been the village chief’s home
After the lapse of around two thousand years, the excavated village site consists of merely excavated ruins and dug-up artefacts, most of the biodegradeable building materials have rotted away by now. However, the post-holes help archaeologists to reconstruct the original scene
Besides residences, there are rice storehouses …
Raised from the ground, they are built on piles or wooden stilts
The “legs” of the rice storehouses have mice-guards that prevent fieldmice from climbing up to raid the storehouses
There are a fair number of these storehouses, indicating a well-off settlement
The nearby burial site gives many clues about the settlement’s inhabitants’ lives
Ditches were dug and aligned squares …
A wooden coffin was lowered into the centre of some of the mounds, signifying an elite’s burial
The graves were neatly aligned and covered up, indicating care and thought
Urn burials of other members in the ditches on the edges of the square mound was the norm
Two pottery jars were used to hold the dead’s remains, one inverted over the other
Smaller jars were used for children’s remains
Village life for the most part must have been serene …
They wove their own clothes, built or repaired and rethatched their own homes
…followed seasonal rhythms and activities
Such as weaving which was considered sacred work of maidens
Pottery-making was also the domain of females
An assortment of pottery was made, but the forms became much simpler than the ornate forms of the previous Jomon Period (the site was continuously inhabited from Jomon times)
This anthropomorphic vessel with a quirky-looking face was recovered from the site
Types of pottery from the site
Large deer bones excavated from the site indicate divination was practised
Ritual and shamanic magic, divination and fortune-telling was normal for the Yayoi society
Imagining life in Yayoi times (painting display by the Otsu Village Historical Museum)
For more details on an excavated Yayoi moated settlement, read the detailed report on the Asahi site, Aichi prefecture.
Heritage of Japan 