Walking Tour of Sannai Maruyama

By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Guide

Some of the pit houses seen at Sannai Maruyama were simple thatched-roof semisubterranean houses, such as this one, reconstructed for the site museum. To make a bark-thatched pit dwelling, a pit was excavated into the ground and a bark or wood branches were assembled over the top in a tipi-like manner.

Sources

See the Jomon Timeline and Definition for more specifics on the culture.

See the official Sannai Maruyama website for further information. If you are planning a visit to Japan, the site is open to visitors, with a museum and several reconstructed buildings.

Habu, Junko 2008 Growth and decline in complex hunter-gatherer societies: a case study from the Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site, Japan. Antiquity 82:571–584.

Habu, Junko and Clare Fawcett 1999 Jomon archaelogy and the representation of Japanese origins. Antiquity 73:587-793.

Habu, Junko, Minkoo Kim, Mio Katayama, and Hajime Komiya 2001 Jomon subsistence-settlement systems at the Sannai Maruyama site. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 21:9-21. Free download

Anonymous. The Sannai Maruyama Site: Extraordinarily Large Settlement in Prehistoric Japan. Undated pamphlet available at the Sannai Maruyama site webpage.