Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2022 - 51

more settled way of life while still maintaining
connections with distant groups.
" During this time, we find that the same
patterns appeared on Jomon pots in different
locations, suggesting that potters were
emulating each other and that different
communities were in communication, " says
Kaner. The Jomon continued to experiment
with increasingly complex designs, including
ceramics with wavelike rims made around
7,000 years ago, ultimately leading to the
creation of " flame-style " pots some 5,000
years ago. Found mostly along the central
western coast of Japan's main Honshu
Island, these tall, tapering showpiece pots
are topped with elaborate swirls and spirals
that leap from the rim and crown the vessel.
Creating such pots would have required an
enormous expenditure of time and a high
degree of specialization.
The foods that the Jomon people ate also
A researcher in a University of York laboratory drills into a Jomon potsherd to
extract a sample for chemical testing.
changed over time. " With climate warming came the opportunity
for hunter-gatherers to diversify their diet, particularly
with fruits and nuts from deciduous forests, " says Craig. Stone
and bone artifacts uncovered alongside Jomon potsherds
include arrows, spears, and plant-processing tools such as handheld
grinders and nutcrackers. The variety of artifacts suggests
that the Jomon people exploited a wide range of resources as
the climate changed.
Each Jomon community seems to have had just a handful
of vessels at a time. This, together with the diminutive size
of the pots, which made them too small for processing large
amounts of food, as well as the time and effort that went into
making and decorating them, suggests a specialized purpose
for these early pots. Although Craig and his team can't pinpoint
the species of fish that were being cooked, the chemical signatures
they obtained from the pots suggest varieties of salmon.
" Salmon run at a particular time of year, creating
a seasonal glut, " says Craig. " It's possible
that the pots were used to deal with this by
rendering fish oils for storage, a task involving
heating the fish for a long period of time
that was potentially made easier with a pot. "
The resulting high-calorie, greasy soups made
from fish oils would have been an important
resource during colder times, but it is surprising
to see that the tradition endured through
warmer periods, too. The Jomon even seem
to have used the later elaborate flame-style
pots to cook this oily dish.
A reconstructed early Jomon pot (left) dating to some 15,000 years ago features a
pointed bottom. A later Jomon pot (right) made 10,000 years ago has a flat bottom.
It would seem logical, then, that the contents of the pots
would reflect the foodstuffs available at the time. To Craig and
his team's surprise, however, lipid analysis of pottery samples,
from such sites as the Torihama shell midden on the western
coast of Honshu Island, revealed that the contents of the
Jomon pots did not change over time despite the dramatic
shifts in climate and environment. Instead, almost all the pots
seem to have been used for cooking fish. " It's surprising, " says
Kaner, " because we don't find much in the way of fish remains
or fishing gear in the early Jomon period. "
archaeology.org
I
t wasn't only in Japan that huntergatherer
communities used pottery to
make the most of seasonal surpluses. In
recent years, Craig and his colleagues have traveled to the
Russian Far East and analyzed potsherds uncovered at four
sites along the Amur River, near where it flows into the Pacific
Ocean. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from each of the sites
reveals that people camped there between 16,000 and 10,000
years ago, an era when the climate began to warm and both
coniferous and deciduous forests expanded in the region.
At that time, this stretch of the Amur River was inhabited
by people known as the Osipovka culture. Their conical pots
feature a tapering rim and have flat bottoms, thick walls, and
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Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2022

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