The is the site of the remains of an ancient settlement on

Okinawa Island , officially , is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five Japanese archipelago, main islands of Japan. The island is ...

. Located in the Iha district of Uruma City, south of Ishikawa, the site sits on a large

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

fault slope, and dates from the late Shellmound period of Okinawan archaeology, coinciding with the late

Jōmon period In Japanese history, the is the time between , during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism an ...

, c. 2500 – 1000 BC. The shell mound is approximately thick and covers an area of . The site was first discovered in 1920 by Ōyama Kashiwa, confirming that Okinawa was settled by

ancient peoples Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian language, ...

, and is one of only a few fully excavated shell mounds in Okinawa. The site includes remains of fish and animal bones, earthen and stoneware, and goods made out of horn.

References

Ryukyu Islands {{Asia-archaeology-stub Prehistoric sites in the Ryūkyū Islands