Ceramic, Lithic, and Settlement Variability of the Incipient Jomon Sites on Tanegashima Island, Japan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although conventional thinking has associated the advent of pottery with farming, sedentism, and groundstones, more recent research suggests that emergence contexts vary. Case studies on intra-regional variability are required to better understand the timing and behavioral context of the adoption of pottery. In this study, we provide the case of the first pottery on Tanegashima Island of southern Kyushu, Japan dated to ca. 14,000/13,500 Cal BP, during the Incipient Jomon period. We visually analyzed ceramics from the Incipient Jomon of the Onigano and Okunonita sites on Tanegashima to infer technological and behavioral variability. We also obtained data on chipped and ground stone technology and archaeological features for comparison. Results suggest that whereas Onigano contains non-local ceramics, Okunonita pottery does not have a signature of non-local production. The manufacturing technique is similar, a slab technique, but Onigano tends to have thicker and larger slabs. The degree of sedentism inferred from stone tools are similar although Onigano has chipped stone tools that are non-local. We suggest that the local production of pottery and stone tools occurred at both sites but Okunonita had more access to non-local products.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24535