Grant-in-Aid for Research in Transformative Research Areas (A): The ‘Excavating earthenware’ Digital Museum

Overview: Pottery is the Jomon people’s message to us

①What are pottery impressions?

The impressions found in pottery are the imprints left behind by seeds and insects that were inadvertently or intentionally included in the clay used to make pottery. While there are also ‘impressions’ made by pressing something into the surface of the clay during the formation of the pottery, most impressions are of seeds or insects that were inadvertently kneaded into the clay and then appeared on the surface of the finished pottery by chance. Therefore, seeds and insects can be found on the inner surface walls of pottery that cannot be seen from the outside. Based on the types of seeds and insects found on the insides of pottery, we believe that the potteries were made inside houses. The seeds are mainly from stored foods and food particles, and the insects are mainly household pests and the like.

The origin of impressions and the replica method

② Items that leave impressions

Mainly cultivated plants and household pests

Grains and beans

Adzuki bean

Foxtail millet

Rice

Broomcorn millet

Soybean

Barnyard millet

Fruits

Lacquer tree

Raspberry

Pests

Spider

Maize weevil

Fly

③A new world made visible by x-rays: Capturing the invisible

TSK 484-132

TSK 484-133-2

TSK 484-135

④ Searching within pottery: 22nd-century Archaeology (project description)

The ‘Searching Within Pottery’ project, which is a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Grant-in-Aid for Research in Transformative Research Areas (A) project that we started at the end of 2020, is an attempt to extract a wide range of historical information from pottery with the cooperation of researchers in a number of different fields including archaeology, chronology, chemistry, entomology, botany, zoology, agriculture, and pharmacology. This project focuses on pottery pieces held in the collections of museums and buried cultural property centres throughout Japan in an attempt to investigate these pieces using a new research technique in conjunction with the annual excavations that occur at archaeological sites. The goal is to establish a comprehensive method of study that is rightfully referred to as ‘22nd-century archaeology’.

Excavating earthenware

The Jomon people ate weeds (The beginning of permanent settlement and plant cultivation)

The appearance of pests and a pest across the sea strait: The world of the maize weevil

Cockroaches inhabited the Jomon houses

Mystic pottery (Prayers for fertility): Pottery with large numbers of seeds and maize weevils embedded in the clay

Rice arrived during the Jomon Period

The world of pottery admixtures

Analysis (Conclusion)

　Our research focused mainly on the seeds and insects that were kneaded into the clay used in pottery-making rather than the seeds and insects found in the soil at archaeological sites, which was the focus of archaeologists in the past. In other words, our research is quite literally ‘searching within pottery’. The tool we used to carry out this research—the CT scan—is the latest scientific technology, and we attempted to analyse the resulting images using AI.
The excavations taking place at archaeological sites has been on the decline year by year. However, the large amounts of pottery that have previously been excavated at these sites are being preserved. We would like to create a new 22nd-century archaeology that utilises a wide variety of scientific technologies on pottery—effectively turning them into new sources of study—and put these new technologies into social implementation.