Pottery before farming
The Jomon period is the long prehistoric era of the Japanese islands before the arrival of rice farming, usually dated from roughly 14,000 BCE to about 300 BCE, with the end varying by region. Its people lived mainly by hunting, fishing, gathering nuts and shellfish, and some small-scale cultivation. What makes the Jomon unusual is that these mobile or semi-settled foragers made pottery early and in great quantity. In many parts of the world pottery is closely tied to farming; in Japan it clearly comes first.
The word “Jomon” means “cord pattern” in Japanese. It was applied to the pottery after the American zoologist Edward Morse found fragments with cord impressions at the Omori shell mound near Tokyo in 1877, and later archaeologists extended the name to the whole period.
How old is it?
Some of the oldest Jomon pottery comes from sites such as Odai Yamamoto I in Aomori Prefecture, and from Fukui Cave in Nagasaki Prefecture. Radiocarbon dating of residues and nearby charcoal places the earliest sherds at around 16,000 years ago in calibrated years, though exact figures vary between studies and are revised as methods improve.
It is often said that Jomon pottery is the oldest in the world. That claim needs care. Comparable early pottery has been reported from southern China, with some dates that are as old or older, and from the Russian Far East. A safer statement is that Jomon ceramics are among the earliest known, and that East Asia as a whole appears to be where pottery first appeared. The question of whether the technique spread between these areas or was invented independently more than once is still debated.
Making the pots
Jomon vessels were built by hand, usually from coils or slabs of clay, not shaped on a potters wheel, which was unknown in Japan until much later. Clay was sometimes mixed with sand, plant fibre or crushed shell to reduce cracking. Pots were fired in open fires or shallow pits at modest temperatures, producing a fairly soft, brown to reddish ware.
The cord marks themselves were made by rolling or pressing twisted cords, or sometimes by stamping with cord-wrapped sticks, into the damp clay. Surfaces were also decorated by incising, pinching, applying clay strips or pressing with shells. Cord patterns hint at the textile skills of the makers, and the same twisted fibres could have been used for nets and baskets. Studies of ancient weaving and fibre work in Japan are fragmentary, because organic materials seldom survive, so pottery impressions are valuable indirect evidence.
Shapes and styles through time
Archaeologists divide the Jomon into Incipient, Initial, Early, Middle, Late and Final phases. Pottery styles change a great deal across them, and researchers use pottery seriation, the ordering of styles by similarity and change, to build local chronologies.
- Early forms. Many of the first pots were small and simple, often round-bottomed or pointed-bottomed jars that could sit in embers or be supported in soft ground.
- Middle Jomon. In central Japan, especially along the Shinano River in Niigata, potters made dramatic “flame-style” vessels with elaborate rims, whose shapes seem more ceremonial than practical.
- Late and Final Jomon. In the northeast, finer, thinner vessels appear, including spouted and polished forms, and highly decorated ritual objects.
Regional variety is a hallmark. Because the islands stretch over a long north-south range, local traditions developed in different environments, and styles can often be tied to particular areas.
What the pots were for
The principal use was cooking and storage. Residue analysis on some vessels has identified fats from fish and other marine foods, and this suggests that boiling and stewing allowed people to prepare shellfish, nuts and fish in ways that made them easier to digest or store. Boiled acorns, with bitter tannins leached out beforehand, seem to have been an important food in some regions. Pottery thus fits comfortably into a settled foraging life, in which seasonal resources were rich enough to support villages.
The best-known village, Sannai Maruyama in Aomori, was occupied for more than a thousand years in the fourth and third millennia BCE and held pit-dwellings, large post structures and many ceramics. It is often used to illustrate how complex a non-farming society could be.
Figurines and ritual objects
The Jomon also made clay figurines called dogu, mostly of women or humanoid figures with stylised features. Those with large goggle-like eyes, from the Final Jomon of northeastern Japan, are especially famous. Many have been found broken, which has led some researchers to think they were deliberately broken in rituals, although the purpose is not known. Interpretations as fertility figures, healing charms or spirit representations are all hypotheses.
Legacy
Jomon pottery gave way, from about the first millennium BCE, to the thinner and plainer wares of the Yayoi culture, associated with rice farmers. Studies of ancient DNA show that modern Japanese people carry ancestry from both Jomon populations and later migrants, which means the Jomon world is part of the background of present-day Japan, not a vanished episode. The pots remain one of the most visible reminders of a society that, long before farming reached the islands, built a distinctive and varied material culture.