Feasting from the Early to Middle Jomon Period Deduced from Seed Impressions on Pottery

Summary

Seed impressions of cultigens have been recovered from pottery of the early to middle Jomon periods in the central highland of Honshu and the western Kanto district of Japan. These include such cultigens as Perilla fructescens introduced from China and Azuki bean (Vigna angularis) and Soy bean (Glycine max) domesticated in Japan. They often occur in large numbers and are also found even in clay figurines (Dogu). I found that the seeds exist not only on pottery surfaces, but also within pottery clay from X-ray CT observation. Image analyses of pottery revealed that even those impressions on pottery surfaces were not applied on the surfaces after shaping, but included in the clay while mixing. Seeds included in large numbers derive only from the above three cultigens, Cornus, and Zanthoxylum that people used commonly. However, inclusion of these seeds occur irrespective of pottery types. Thus, inclusion of the seeds of these five plants in the pottery was intentional, and these seeds had a special or ritual importance in the people’s lives such as wishes or acknowledgements for rich crop. Restricted occurrence of pottery with many seed impressions in large settlement sites seems to reflect hope for continuous use of plant resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Feasts and Ritual Structures: Ethnoarchaelogical and Archaeological Perspectives

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13232