Pottery, Shellmounds, and Monuments: Environmental Impacts and Landscape Management of Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher (HGF) in Jomon Japan

Summary

The Jomon Period in Japan (ca. 16,500-3,000 BP) is one of the world’s earliest ceramic-making cultures. The Jomon sustained a hunter-gatherer-fisher (HGF) economy for an extensive period of time until the introduction of the wet rice paddy system from the Asian continent. Three major factors characterize the Jomon cultural landscape: pottery, shell mounds, and stone/wood monuments. This paper will discuss the roles these elements played in the alteration of the landscape. First, despite the early emergence of pottery, ceramics dramatically increased in quantity and came into daily use only after a sedentary lifestyle became widespread in the Early Holocene. As firing pottery requires substantial firewood, pottery uptake must have produced considerable pressure on local environments, fostering a complex use of resources. Second, large-scale shell mounds followed the development of pottery, probably functioning as landmarks to strengthen social bonds of local communities. Finally, stone/wood monuments were the last to appear, when the Jomon society expanded into previously unused settings, such as alluvial flatlands and deep mountains. All of these are closely related to the perception, management and alteration of the Jomon's hunter-gatherer-fisher environment and cultural landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Terraforming and Monumentality in Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Landscapes

Keywords

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