The is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

in Chigasaki,

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kana ...

, in the southern

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

containing a middle to late

Yayoi period The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...

settlement trace. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 2019. The site is located in close proximity to the

Shimoterao Kanga site The is an archaeological site with the ruins of a Nara to Heian period government administrative complex located in what is now the city of Chigasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture in the southern Kantō region of Japan. It was designated as a National H ...

, also a National Historic Site.

Overview

The Shimoterao Nishikata Site is located at the western end of the Sagamino Plateau at an elevation of approximately 13 meters.

Archaeological excavation In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

s conducted by the Chigasaki City Board of Education have found the traces of one of the largest

moated settlements A ( ) is a human settlement (village) surrounded by a moat. It is thought to be a new settlement boundary facility brought from the continent along with paddy rice agriculture. When a moat is surrounded by a moat, water moat, it is written moat ...

in the southern Kantō region dating to the latter half of the middle Yayoi period. The settlement had two phases of construction. The initial settlement extended for 200 meters east-to-west by 250 meters north-to-south, with an area of about 40,000 square meters, and was surrounded by a moat. In the later phase of the settlement, the area was extended to 400 meters east-to-west by 268 meters north-to-south, of 84,000 square meters, and the moats were correspondingly extended, and a second moat was dug. From the inside the enclosure, the foundations of 58

pit dwelling A pit-house (or ''pit house'', ''pithouse'') is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of weather conditions, these structures may also be used to store food (just like a pantry, a larder ...

s, one prehistoric storage pit and three

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

s with a large concentration of

Yayoi pottery Yayoi pottery (弥生土器 Yayoi doki) is earthenware pottery produced during the Yayoi period, an Iron Age era in the history of Japan, by an Island which was formerly native to Japan traditionally dated 300 BC to AD 300. The pottery allow ...

were discovered. In addition to various earthenware shards, other artifacts included weapons such as thick sword-bladed

stone axe A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or che ...

s and hollowed-in columnar single-edged stone axes, various utilitarian

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s as well as grindstones, small amounts of ironware and jewelry such as ''

magatama are curved, comma-shaped beads that appeared in prehistoric Japan from the Final Jōmon period through the Kofun period, approximately 1000 BCE to the 6th century CE. The beads, also described as "jewels", were made of primitive stone and eart ...

'' and tubular beads. One of the ''magatama'' was a large unfinished product with a length of 6.09 cm, indicating that this was also a production site. The site is about a ten-minute walk from

Chigasaki Station is a junction passenger railway station located in the city of Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It is operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). Lines Chigasaki Station is served by the Tōkaidō Main Line and the Shōnan-Shi ...

References

External links

Chigasaki City home page
{{in lang, ja Archaeological sites in Japan Yayoi period Chigasaki, Kanagawa History of Kanagawa Prefecture Historic Sites of Japan

Overview

See also

References

External links