Jomon period: content
The Beginnings of Jomon (up to Incipient Jomon) - in progress
The Developments of Pottery - in progress
Occupation of space by the Jomon people - in progress
Subsistence strategies during Jomon - in progress
Everyday life of the Jomon people - in progress
The spiritual landscape and culture of the Jomon - in progress
The last stages of Jomon and the Yayoi transition - in construction
Jomon period: The spiritual landscape and culture of the Jomon
Text in progress
We have so far almost exclusively discussed the "practical" aspects of Jomon life: food gathering, production of tools and objects of use in everyday life, construction of buildings, and so on: all those aspects are material in nature, and the remains of all those activites can be identified and their purpose deduced from their nature and shape, even by us, hundreds of year later. But there's another aspect, just as fundamental, which we have barely touched so far, which is everything pertaining to the Jomon spirituality (here the term "religion" would seem out of place) and culture. It's a trickier aspect to tackle as items related to it are difficult for us to interprete as the symbolism, the meaning of those objects, or the forms of performing art, like music, related to them, have disappeared along with the people who have created them; maybe some aspects have survived in later culture and folklore, but similarities may also be misleading sometimes
This question is of particular inportance regarding the Jomon culture because no other hunter-gatherers population created more such objects, especially from the later part of the Early Jomon - Middle Jomon onwards, which tells us that they had developed rather rich and complex rituals and that this specific part of their life had probably an important influence on their daily routine. Items with a strictly ritualistic or cultural meaning appear to have been few and far between before that, even though the earliest such objects, flat pottery disks, were found in the Incipient Jomon layers at Fukui cave. Other early manifestations of cultural Jomon include incised pebbles that vaguely ressemble man and woman
The first examples of clay figurines also dates back to the Incipient Jomon [1], but it is only in the later stage of the Early Jomon that they really begin to develop, to become much more common in the Middle Jomon, just about at the same time as two other types of items: phallic stone bars, small enough at this time to be held in hand and which were probably for ceremonies of a private character, but which would later become much larger and probably meant for public rituals only to become smaller again in the Late and Final Jomon, and body ornaments, of which we are not sure whether they were a fashion or if these ornaments had a specific significance, singling out the people who wore them. At any rate, these traditions will carry on and strive from the Middle Jomon onwards until the onset of the subsequent Yayoi period: at that time, although people took advantage of the new materials available, and in particular metal, to produce ritual and cultural items, those are fewer and have little in common with the items created during the Jomon, probably revealing a pronounced change that occured sometime during the transition from one period to the next
In that regard, the fate of clay figurines is particularly revealing and thus hold great interest for archaeoogists. Until the late Early Jomon, figurines had only vaguely human shapes and never had any details of their face. Even when they came into their own by the Middle Jomon, their face could sometimes still be lacking in detailing, however their body tended to be much more decorated, probably ressembling the body ornaments Jomon people used on themselves [2]. Overall, those figurines look little like the ones that were found in Europe or the Near and Middle East during the neolithic: indeed there are very few representations of planturous female beings [3] (however, whether or not a majority of these figurines represent female beings or not is still a matter of debate, see Habu, 2004:144). A great number of them have been recovered broken, which has led some archaeologists to suspect that they being broken was part of ceremonies (however, this interpretation is not shared by all). But what is really telling is their number: in all, about 15,000 have been recovered so far. It is estimated that there may be well above ten time that number that would have been produced throughout the Jomon period. But the most intriguing aspect concers the timing of their production. This timing varies from region to region (Habu, 2004: chapter 5), but a phenomenon that occurs at the end of the Jomon period is particularly stricking. A great center of production appears by the late Jomon in the western Kyushu, in the place and around the time at which Korean immigrants had, many scholars believe, introduced rice agriculture to the archipelago. The production of clay figures was then massive but short-lived. This pattern is then seen further east, and it keeps happening through time, each time a bit further northeast. As we have seen, Yayoi had fewer "cultural" items, which were different from the ones in used before. It is as if the production of those figurines was an a attempt by the Jomon people to take a stand against the massive change that was occuring in their world but, apart from the northern Honshu island, where clay figurines continued to be produced for a significantly longer period of time than elsewhere, these episodes appear to have been brief before the Yayoi people would progressively establish agriculture and a new way of life throughout Japan [4]
Stone rods are often described as the clay figurines' male conterpart: because of their phallic form, they are believed to have served in ceremonies essentially performed by men, maybe related to hunting. Kobayashi (2004) notes that they go from small, handheld artefacts probably meant for intimate ceremonies in the Early Jomon to large elements (sometimes as high as, or higher than, one meter) sometimes part of whole structures in the Middle Jomon; Habu (2004) underlines that smaller such artefacts are again associated with Late and Final Jomon, alongside so-called stone swords (either double- or single-edged) which were sometimes hard to tell apart: some scholars believe both evolved from the larger Middle Jomon stone rods, while others think that stone swords were inspired by continental bronze swords. Those artefacts were often found broken which may mean that they were broken delibaretly at ceremonies, not unlike clay figurines
A number of other ritual artefacts and ornaments, the greatest part of which were located in eastern Japan, have also been identified, some of which would typically be found with burials. Grave goods were mostly everyday items in the Incipient and Initial Jomon, while ornaments (so-called "exquisite" ornaments) and ritual artefacts appear in graves in the later stages of the Initial Jomon (they are present on average in about 10% of burials pits in the later stages of the Jomon period): the increase of their number, in particular associated with burial jars of infants (see below) in the Late and Final Jomon, has been interpreated by some as a proof of developing hereditary social inequity
The most typical form of burials were primary burials in pits coming in all sorts of shapes: those flask-shaped probably had served as storage pits before becoming burials pits. Because the japanese soils are mostly acidic, bone remains are rare, but circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of grave goods (ornaments or specific pottery and stone tools), or also chemical analysis have allowed to identified them. As we have seen when discussing settlements configurations, burials could be forming the centremost circle of larger Jomon settlements; on the other hand, at Sannai Maruyama, they would instead form rows along major pathways. Some burials would be marked by stones or would be lined by stone slabs. Burial jars for infants, usually one year old or younger, are fairly common throughout the archipelago. Jars could also occasionally be associated with secondary burials in the Late and Final Jomon; they were overall fairly rare, although evidence of those is more commonly found in western Japan
Other cultural items of particular interest are those made of stones like talc and jade. Although those stones can be found throughout Japan, the fact that a few sites appear to have produced beads and earring in these stones at a scale far exceeding what could have been used by the local as early as the Initial Jomon for talc and the Middle Jomon for jade, as well as the presence of those items all over the archipelago, indicates that the Jomon people weren't aware of many of the sources and that the settlements located near those that were known at the time had become production centers from which those commodities were then traded. Jade in partiular seems to have played an important role in the Jomon culture: production centres appear to have stored jade as much as they could, and raised large monuments of wooden pillars and stones, as if to visually remind people of the statue of the site. Many settlements throughout the archipelago that have been excavated revealed to have one, more often two large jade beads. This specific number and the regularity at which they were found indicates that they must have had a special significance not for a specific person, but rather for the settlement at large
Other finds related to the culture and rituals during the Jomon periods were actually rather large, intriguing structures found away from other types of structures like pit-dwellings, or are associated with settlements that were mostly inhabitated before the ritual structures were built (however several revealed burials associated with them). Some are circular structures, either of earth as in Terano Higashi (Tochigi prefecture), or of stones as is the case at Oyu (Akita prefecture) or Komakino (northern Honshu), while others appear to have been based on great pillars of wood, as at Sannai Maruyama (northern Honshu). All these structures seem to have in common that their plan was related to the movement of celestial bodies, and more particularly the sun. Another point is that, given the number of stones, the volumes of earth that had to be moved or also the size of the wooden pillars used, those structures must have demanded an considerable collective effort, which means that they must have been of great significance at least to the people who built it. Also, more often than not, as I mentioned before, very small or no settlement was in the neighborhood but, given their importance, it's unlikely that those structures were simply abandoned. Walking to their location must have been quite the trek in itself for the populations and therefore I would suggest that possibly, those were places of pilgrinage or yearly gatherings; no trace of pit building was found because in that case, they would have used temporary shelters for the time of the rituals before going back to their villages
Maybe some of the most intriguing artefacts are those pottery pots with holes in the rim: there's an important debate about what was their exact purpose. Some scholars argue that they were meant for alcohol production (seeds of wild grape were found inside, and there were enough elderberry remains at the site of Sannai Maruyama to lead us to believe that, indeed, Jomon people did produce alcohol regularly), but others, among which some of the greatest name of Japanese archaeology, think that they were in fact used as drums, with the holes allowing to tie animal skins to the rim to effectively produce sounds. Moreover, some of them displayed patterns of dancing figures which seems to comfort the theory of those pots serving as musical instruments. A few more items recovered also seem to pertain to music, like clay rattles and ocarinas; very rare examples of items made out of wood have been identified also as being part of what would have been string instruments
[1] Habu, Junko, 2004:143-144
[2] Kobayashi, Tatsuo, 2004
[3] Imamura (in "Prehistoric Japan") suggests that most of these pebble and clay figurines are female, but based on the photographies I have seen so far, I would share Kobayashi's caution, in particular regarding figurines dating from before the Middle Jomon
[4] For this aspect of masse production of clay figures at the end of the Jomon period, see Kobayashi, Tatsuo, 2004