A Study of the Armor Production System in the Middle Kofun Period

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.

Possessing complex three-dimensional structures, and created using the most advanced technologies, including technologies introduced from the Korean Peninsula, the armor of the Kofun Period in Japan represents the finest iron technology of that period. It is commonly accepted that armor was produced centrally under the Yamato royal authority and distributed to outlying areas. However, this hypothesis lacks details and the actual conditions of workshops and production organization, such as design and production batches, and division of labor are completely unknown. There has been little progress clarifying armor production units and manufacturing organization because the design steps and the first half of the production process are insufficiently studied. Through the collection and analysis of precise three-dimensional measurements, this project has confirmed that the riveted cuirasses of the Middle Kofun Period were made using two-dimensional templates at the stage of cutting out plates, and that multiple cuirasses were made using the same template. This presentation combines analysis of the units of armor design with analysis of the technological components of the production process to examine production batches and division of labor. Through analysis of tombs containing armor from the same production batches, a reconstruction of the armor production system is attempted.

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): 25319