The most abundant of foods discovered at the site were fish and marine mammals, including yellow tail, blowfish, mackerel, scorpion fish, surf perch, and several species of shark. The presence of blowfish is interesting--it is a delicacy in Japan today, but a fish that is extremely poisonous unless properly handled and cooked.
Terrestrial animals represented in the middens are rabbit, flying squirrels and a few deer and wild boar.
Plants found in the middens are chestnut, walnut, raspberry, elderberry, and wild grape, possibly for making fruit wine. Cultigens--that is to say, plants that required tending--occurred in small amounts in the middens at Sannai Maruyama, but include bottle gourd, beans, and burdock.
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, 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.
