New Approaches to Jomon Dogu: Case Studies from Eastern and Western Japan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents a study of the clays used in the manufacture of ceramic figurines, or dogu, from the Jomon period of Japanese archaeology. Analyses of clays in dogu from sites in Niigata (eastern Honshu) and Okayama (western Honshu) using a handheld XRF machine will be discussed in the context of current approaches to the circulation of commodities in Jomon Japan. The great majority of the over 20,000 known dogu are from eastern Japan, with a much smaller number known from the west. Recent and current work in western Japan, however, including the development of a Western Jomon Database at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, is casting new light on our understanding of the Western Japanese Jomon. Comparisons will be made to studies of Palaeolithic figurines from Siberia, where specific materials were selected to represent particular forms of figurine.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25016