From the Earthly to the Celestial: Material Culture and Funerary Practice at Fujinoki Kofun

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.

In 1985, archaeologists excavating Fujinoki Kofun opened for the first time the tomb’s sealed burial chamber. They were surprised to discover that not only had the site been undisturbed by tomb robbers, but that it contained one of the most lavish collections of grave-goods to have been recovered from Japan’s Late Kofun period (500-600 CE). Bridging the fields of archaeology and visual culture studies, this paper considers the formal design and positional relationships of the Fujinoki artifacts as a means of analyzing the mortuary rituals conducted at the site. This study represents a departure from the dominant scholarly discourse on kofun, which approach tumuli primarily as monuments symbolizing regional authority, often overlooking the soteriological beliefs that precipitated the creation of tombs. The argument highlights the need to move beyond studies relegating Japan to a passive role in a core-periphery relationship with the mainland, classifying protohistoric objects as either "native" Japanese or "foreign" imports. This paper posits that the design of the Fujinoki grave-goods embody an intersection of cultural traditions, reflecting the fluid exchange of people and ideas across the Japan Sea, and displaying the integration of mainland derived materials into a funerary system specific to the sixth century Nara Basin.

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)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24389