Jomon of Japan

by Douglas M. Kenrick

The prehistoric hunter-gatherer culture known as the Jomon was already well researched in Japan when, during the 1960s, scientific tests indicated that the very earliest of the Jomon pottery had been made more than 12,000 years ago. Japanese reaction was twofold: according to the archaeological establishment the tests were wrong, while some of the new wave of archaeologists believed that the tests were reliable and that it was only a matter of time before similar tests indicated even earlier dates for pottery from China and elsewhere. Since the 1960s, supporting evidence and many more tests have substantiated the 12,000 year result, and nowhere else in the world has provided such early evidence. By the 1970s the primacy of the Jomon potters was accepted by most archaeologists in Japan, and was beginning to be recognized in the West. However, recognition is far from complete, largely due to a lack of any comprehensive account of Jomon pottery in the English language. In Jomon of Japan D