Issues in the Study of Settlements of the Jomon Period (Special Issue : HISTORICAL RESEARCH TODAY, 2006)

In the analysis of Jomon settlements 縄文集落, there are two conflicting views. One view holds that Jomon settlements were not as extensive as current archaeological sites suggest and that the settlements were temporary sites resettled over and over again. The other view holds that extensive sites are the result of accumulation in the sites over hundreds of years and the large-scale settlements were equipped with facilities necessary for sedentary life. The former is called the "revisionist (or synchronous) theory" since it was derived from the stand point of those in charge of excavations who sought how to consider what had once been seen as contemporaneous dwellings and graves. The latter is known as the "circular settlement theory" because it posits a theory of settlements based on an analysis of the special circular structure of the Jomon settlements that provided evidence of such by their concentric circular form. The greatest source of the conflict between the two theories is the fact that it cannot be made entirely clear that the remains of the many dwellings, graves, and storage pits were contemporaneous. For example, even though the remains of hundreds of pit dwellings have been discovered on the sites, it is not possible with current research methods to determine immediately how many structures existed at one time and thus how they were distributed within the settlement. In the context of this debate, archaelogists representing both the "revisionist theory" and the "circular settlement theory" convened a scholarly conference on Jomon settlements in 2001. The existence of the problem began increasingly apparent. A new investigative research methodology that could prove synchrony of Jomon dwellings was revealed in 2004. One of these was Aota site Excavation Report, which made clear the existence of a group of eight structures that had been erected one after another in the space of five years, and of another group of ten structures likewise erected within five years of one another on the basis of dendro-chronological examination of the posts that formed the upright post-standing buildings of the final Jomon period. In addition, the examination of settlements in KOBAYASHI Ken'ichi's New Perspective of Study on Jomon Society : Applied Radiocarbon Dating to Archaeological Methodology attempted to confirm whether dwellings were of the same period by examining their temporal relationship that had been obtained through archaeological methods more concretely by the application of high-precision radiocarbon dating by the AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) method. Both works transcended the lingering and troublesome issue of verification and have been highly regarded as taking a first step toward a theory of settlements based on facts that could be verified. Furthermore, in 2005 TANIGUCHI Koji published Circular Settlements and the Structure of Jomon Society, which systemically argued the circular settlement theory. The day when the empirical and structuralist theories of settlement scholarship can be argued on an equal footing is fast approaching.