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: Occupation of land by the Jomon people
Text in progress
The study of pottery isn't just about its technological and artistical development, but it also enables us to better understand the occupation of Japan by the Jomon people, as well as the interraction between the different regions. The differences in terms of both "atmosphere" (or "mood") and stylistic system (defined by different shapes, motifs, etc used in a given style) allow scholars to define styles of pottery, each developing in a given style zone. They have thus divided the japanese archipelago into regional style zones, starting in the Initial Jomon and that would prove fairly stable throughout the period [1]. Generally speaking, we now divide Jomon Japan into five pottery style zones, each further divided into smaller zones; if central Japan has been researched extensively, and thus its style zones map's accuracy must be pretty satisfactory, other regions might yet see further refinements to the subdivision of their own regions. Similarities have emerged between the pottery style zones as defined by scholars and the different types of environments represented on the archipelago at the time
Another type of links it is tempting to draw is that between pottery styles and Jomon people groups: however, archaeologists have so far been cautious with identifying pottery styles with groups of people. For one, pottery style zones are not always easy to discern, each community of potters having their own style but most certainly were also under the influence of styles coming from other areas around them, and some of those foreign elements could have been included into their own pottery style. Moreover, some of the patterns used, called "narrative" patterns because they were used not just for their decorative value but also because they were invested with a specific meaning the potter would want to convey, probably transcanded style zones. Unlike purely decorative patterns, they would therefore not be part of what defines a given pottery style
Japanese scholars believe that, out of the three scales of pottery style zones, large, medium and small, the small one is probably the closest we can come to identify the territory of a given Jomon community, yet even those probably can't be a sure way to indentify individual groups, as in all likeliness some groups would share the same pottery style, thus erasing the boundaries between them. Still, those zones are pretty helpful, if only because they let us know that populations seem to have been pretty keen on maintaining their zones since, as we have seen, pottery style zones are fairly stable from the Initial Jomon onwards. Each zone would encompass a variety of landscapes (moutainous, plains, valleys, coasts, etc) that would have made available enough food throughout the year to sustain the Jomon group. Of course, that means that the people living there had to develop the right technics to make the most of these resources. And this is probably one of the most fascinating aspect of the Jomon culture, that of this wide array of technics they would use, making the most of their environment (more about that in the chapter on Jomon subsistance). As those technics could not be readily be adapted elsewhere, it would probably ensure the fixity of the communities and, with time, the people living within one zone would have created strong cultural and social ties. That and the fact that all most of what they needed could be found within that zone probably led those communities to strongly identify with their environment, considering them as their world, while other zones, inhabitated by other communities, would already be seen as the outside world
That is not to say that communities weren't aware of the existence of others beyond their "world", or that no exchanges happened between them. If anything, the fact that some pottery styles would transcend not just the small scale pottery zones, but middle and large ones as well is proof that exchanges did happen and that communities were not immune to cultural influences, sometimes from fairly far away. Also, some commodities that had a limited number of sources throughout Japan could sometimes be found far away from their origins, suggesting trading networks linking regions between them. It's notably the case for asphalt and jadeite; japanese obsidian from the island of Hokkaido can even be found as far as the Russian Far East and the Kanto Plain
[1] It does not mean, however, that there were never any fluctuations: the Incipient Jomon saw the Linear-appliqué type of pottery dominate the greatest part of the archipelago, while each half of Japan present one dominant type of pottery each around the middle of the Late Jomon (Imamura Keiji, "Prehistoric Japan)