Walking Tour of Sannai Maruyama

By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Guide

Eleven long houses have been excavated at Sannai Maruyama. They were large, oval-shaped semi-subterranean pit dwellings. The reconstruction illustrated here is the longest, measuring 32 meters in length. Long houses were first built during the latter half of the Middle Jomon period, between about 5400 and 4900 years ago.

Archaeologists believe that these structures probably had some special function, perhaps a meeting house or a specialist workshop.

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.