the emergence and transmission of early pottery in the

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Please cite this article as: Yuichi Nakazawa, Quaternary International, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2021.02.037

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The emergence and transmission of early pottery in the Late-Glacial Japan

Yuichi Nakazawa a,*, Masaki Naganuma b,c, Takashi Tsutsumi d,e,f

a Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Japan b Uonuma City Board of Education, Japan c Center for Ainu & Indigenous Studies, Hokkaido University, Japan d Asama Jomon Museum, Japan e Meiji University Center for Obsidian and Lithic Studies, Japan f Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O

Keywords: Pottery Late Glacial Radiocarbon dates Innovation Cultural diffusion Japan

A B S T R A C T

Despite its long-standing assumption of the spread of early pottery innovated by the Late-Glacial hunter-gath-erers in Japan, cultural diffusion as an explanatory model has not explicitly tested. This study addresses the question of the extent to which cultural diffusion played a role in proliferating the innovated early pottery technology across the Japanese Archipelago by employing the distance decay model of cultural diffusion. Based on the assembled dataset of the Late-Glacial assemblages with early pottery radiocarbon dates, distances between the presumed core where the earliest dates were obtained (i.e., Odaiyamamoto I) and the adopted sites do not exhibit the time-progressive pattern. In contrast, frequencies of potsherds relative to lithic artifacts increases as time progressed, implying that early pottery technology was gradually accumulated nearly by the end of the Younger Dryas, ca, 11,000 cal. BP. This study demonstrates that cultural diffusion does not fully explain the emergence and spread of early pottery in Japan, while the Late-Glacial travel and exchange networks enabled hunter-gatherers to transmit and accumulate knowledge of pottery use.

1. Introduction

Pottery is a type of vessel used for cooking and preserving food, liquid, and solids, innovated by Homo sapiens to support a wide range of subsistence economy including hunting, gathering, fishing, grazing, and farming. Similar to stone tools, pottery has long been recognized by archaeologists as the major utensil adopted by ancient human societies in different environmental settings, from the arctic to the desert (e.g., Holmes, 1886; Abercromby, 1914; Harry and Frink, 2009). Pottery is different from stone tools in that it was more used by sedentary than nomadic societies (e.g., Arnold, 1985) as well as more employed among farmers than hunter-gatherers (e.g., Bentley et al., 2002).

With respect to the emerging circumstances of pottery, facets of the environment (e.g., geography, ecology, climate), subsistence, and foraging lifeways are complex among early pottery users in East Asia (e. g., Yasuda, 1998; Yasuda et al., 2004; Kuzmin, 2006; 2013; Wang et al., 2015; Iizuka, 2019; Shoda et al., 2020; Uchiyama et al., 2020). In Japan, the early pottery makers were hunter-gatherer-fishers, known as Jomon (Habu, 2004). It is presupposed that the hunting, gathering, and fishing lifeways had been equally critical since the preceding Upper Paleolithic,

as evidenced by the continuous use of Upper Paleolithic lithic technol-ogies, notably blade and biface technologies. On the other hand, some open-air sites, such as Sankakuyama I (Fujisaki and Nakamura, 2006), Maedakochi (Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, 2002; Morisaki et al., 2019) and Saishikada-nakajima (Hagiya, 2017), where shallow pit houses have been identified, show traces of sedentary lifeway. However, the fraction of pit houses in features is smaller than those observed in the middle Holocene Jomon period (Koyama, 1978; Habu, 2004), suggest-ing that early pottery users persisted in nomadic lifeway with occasional sedentary behavior. In contrast to the cultural continuity between Upper Paleolithic foragers and early pottery users, the scarcity of human skeletal remains at Pleistocene sites in Japan makes it difficult to eval-uate whether the late Upper Paleolithic to early Jomon was biologically continuous (e.g., Nakahashi, 2019). Although there appears to exist physical and genetic continuity between Upper Paleolithic and early Jomon populations (e.g., Yamaguchi, 1996), archaeologists have emphasized the importance of the emergence of pottery among Jomon hunter-gatherers as the cultural and behavioral manifestation of change in diet breadth, particularly of change in diet breadth from large mammals to mid/small animals and increase in the use of marine

* Corresponding author. Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita 15, Nishi 7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-8638, Japan. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Nakazawa).

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resources, including shellfish gathering (e.g., Akazawa, 1980; Aikens and Akazawa, 1996; see also Craig et al., 2013; Lucquin et al., 2018).

The apparent change in diet breadth was correlated with changes in human behavioral organization and global climate that occurred during the transition from the terminal Pleistocene to the initial Holocene (e.g., Binford, 1968; Aikens and Akazawa, 1996). However, these changes were not clear-cut based on the Japanese terminal Pleistocene archae-ological record, as variability in archaeological patterns has been identified with newly synthesized radiocarbon dates for the terminal Pleistocene with respect to early Jomon pottery (e.g., Taniguchi and Kawaguchi, 2001; Yasuda et al., 2004; Sato et al., 2011; Morisaki and Sato, 2014; Morisaki and Natsuki, 2017; Sato and Natsuki, 2017; Mor-isaki et al., 2019). For example, a pioneering study by Yoshinori Yasuda (1998, 2002, Yasuda et al., 2004) delivered the climate-driven cultural ecological explanation that the hunter-gatherers of the terminal Pleis-tocene employed a new adaptive strategy using pottery for the Late-Glacial ecosystem 15,000–14,000 years ago. In this study, evidence of early pottery that attributes it to the Late Glacial was based on the age of Ryukisenmon (linear-relief) pottery, one of the earliest pottery styles recognized from the sites of the Japanese Archipelago (with the excep-tion of Hokkaido and Ryukyu). A recent summary of radiocarbon dates for the Ryukisenmon pottery showed 15,540–12,930 cal. BP (Kobayashi, 2019), largely corresponding to the timing of ecosystem change.

While cultural ecology has provided an explanatory model for un-derstanding the emergence and proliferation of early pottery in Japan, issues remain unexplained in archaeological record. First, regarding the processes of pottery emergence in Japan, archaeology has been more concerned with the earliest pottery groups than with Ryukisenmon. Several styles of pottery (see Fig. 3), notably Mumon, Tsumegatamon, and Toryumon are chronologically placed parallel to and/or prior to Ryukisenmon pottery (e.g., Otsuka, 2013; Nakata, 2016; Kobayashi, 2019). Second, there are large amounts of lithic assemblages that exhibit interassemblage variability in Late-Glacial Japan, from which pottery was evident (e.g., Naganuma, 2004, 2005; Morisaki and Sato, 2014; Nakata, 2016). Late-Glacial assemblages are characterized by various kinds of lithic technological complexes, including the well-known Mikoshiba-Chojakubo (Mikoshiba), a pan-regional technocomplex that has been strictly defined by the combination of stone axes, blades, bi-faces, and grinding stones (e.g., Yamanouchi and Sato, 1967; Tsutsumi, 2013), also loosely labeled as the large-biface technocomplex (e.g., Naganuma, 2004; Iwase, 2008; Hashizume, 2015; Nakata, 2016) (Fig. 1). However, the temporal and functional relationships between early pottery and the Late-Glacial lithic technocomplex have seldom been discussed among scholars. This is due to the research and educa-tional bias that pottery has been studied mainly by ceramicists, while the Late Glacial lithic assemblages have been explored mostly by Paleolithic archaeologists who generally have less experience with details of Jomon pottery than with stone tools. In other words, the archaeologists who work with Jomon are mostly skilled ceramists, while those who study the Paleolithic are lithic specialists, which makes the archaeological discourses between these two groups of archaeologists somewhat con-flicting (cf. Kaner, 2010). The variability in Late- Glacial pottery and lithic technologies has become complex as new data have accumulated, allowing for a reconsideration of the validity of the cultural ecological model and the exploration of a new explanation for the emergence of pottery, prior to the onset of the Holocene.

In this study, we addressed the significance of early pottery, by examining cultural diffusion model (e.g., Edmonson, 1961; Shennan et al., 2015) based on the excavated assemblages dated to the Late Glacial (ca. 16–11ka) that feature pottery. The assemblages examined include some bifacial complexes, such as Mikoshiba-Chojakuko, stem-med points (tanged points), and various bifacial point complexes (Fig. 1). We created our dataset by reexamining reported radiocarbon dates of Late-Glacial pottery in Japan and their spatial and temporal variations in the Japanese Archipelago.

2. Emergence of early pottery and cultural transmission

The emergence of pottery in Europe coupled with the spread of agriculture and language, through the dispersals of agriculturalists has been explained by demic diffusion (e.g., Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1971; Bentley et al., 2002; Renfrew, 1987; Ackland et al., 2012; Cruz Berrocal, 2012; 2015). Contrary to Neolithic Europe regions, the spread of early pottery in Japan appears to have occurred mainly due to cultural diffusion (Edmonson, 1961; Jordan et al., 2016; Morisaki and Natsuki, 2017) among regional hunter-gatherers. This is because the entire Jap-anese Archipelago, including regions of later occupation such as the northern island of Hokkaido, was densely occupied for more than ten millennia before the onset of Late Glacial (e.g., Nakazawa, 2017; Izuho et al., 2018). At the same time, the emergence of pottery can be explained by the technological convergence that occurred as an inde-pendent innovation of pottery technology without significant knowl-edge transmission. Indeed, there is little persuasive argument that rejects the idea of convergence in explaining the emergence of pottery across the Japanese Archipelago.

Early pottery occurred in Late-Glacial complexes. The Late-Glacial tool inventories have some diagnostic tools, notably stone axes including edge-ground stone axes called the “Mikoshiba-type stone axes” that characterize the “Mikoshiba-Chojakubo Culture” (Morishima, 1968, 1970; Tsutsumi, 2013), bifaces (bifacial points), and blades. Stone arrowheads (small projectile points) are sometimes found in Late-Glacial assemblages such as Hinata Cave (Sagawa and Suzuki, 2006), and they were used ubiquitously as hunting weapons during the Holocene Jomon period. Although occurrences of early pottery are partial within all Late-Glacial assemblages, they are found in most regions of the Japanese Archipelago (Fig. 2). Sites with early pottery are in woodland environ-ments from the Late-Glacial landscape, from northern subalpine conif-erous forests to the southern mixed coniferous and deciduous broad-leaved forests (Yasuda et al., 2004). This Late-Glacial environ-ment allows some researchers to support the cultural ecological expla-nation that early pottery was invented during human adaptation at the macro-regional scale, particularly under the deciduous forests of Northeast Asia (Sasaki, 2001; Yasuda, 2002). At the same time, as notably represented in the culture historical perspective to the “Mikoshiba-Chojakubo Culture” that has been assumed to be a cultural entity diffused from the Lower Amur River region (Yamanouchi, S., Sato, T., 1967; Okamoto, 1979, Anzai, 2003; Naganuma, 2005), archaeolo-gists working on pottery and lithic industries of the Pleistocene/Holo-cene transition tend to favor the cultural diffusion as an explanatory model.

While it is still debatable the extent to which the varied styles of early pottery (e.g., Mumon [“wares without decoration”]) are related to regional hunter-gatherer groups (e.g., Otsuka, 2013), dates from early pottery assemblages enables one to address the question as to whether pottery was invented from a specific region (a site) and spread to other regions (sites). Given the ecological and geographic variation in micro-regions constrained by latitudinal and longitudinal differences and the ragged terrains of the Japanese Archipelago, we see that the theory of cultural transmission (e.g., Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981; Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Fort, 2015) is appropriate to examine the question that cultural diffusion played a role in spreading early pottery technology. In particular, the theory of cultural diffusion (e.g., Edmonson, 1961; Lycett, 2019; see also Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1971) offers a legitimate model for testing the expected processes of diffusion of early pottery in the Japanese Archipelago from the geographic location where the oldest pottery was found to surrounding regions through existing networks of regional hunter-gatherer societies without significant movement of populations.

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Fig. 1. Distribution of Late-Glacial sites in Japan (adopted from Tsutsumi 2020). Abbreviations: EA: edge-ground axes, LP: leaf-shaped points, WP: willow-leaf shaped points, TP: tanged points (stemmed points), A: arrowheads, AS: arrow shaft straighter, PU: plain ware pottery, PB: Toryumon pottery, PL: Ryukisenmon pottery, PP: Ryutaimon pottery, PF: Tsumegatamon pottery, PR: Tajomon pottery, CF: cray figurines Sources of pictures (from archaeological site reports, otherwise permitted from authorized by curatorial offices): 1 Obihiro Centennial Museum, 2 Taniguchi (1999), 3 Noheji Town Museum of History and Ethnology, 4 Takahata Town Board of Education, 5 Tokamachi City Museum, 7 Kamiina Archaeological Society, 8 Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, 8 (upper picture): Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, 8 (right picture): Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Edu-cation (2002), 9 Numazu City Board of Education, 10 Mie Prefectural Board of Education, 11 Shiga Prefecture, 12 (left): Laboratory of Archaeology and Ethnology at Keio University, 12 (right) National Museum of Japanese History, 13 and 14 Sasebo City Board of Education, 15 Kagoshima Prefectural Archaeological Center.

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3. Methods

3.1. Dates of Late-Glacial assemblages with early pottery

Dates of early pottery have been redundantly reported by several researchers (e.g., Ono et al., 2002; Kudo 2012; 2016; Craig et al., 2013; Kunikita et al., 2013; Kobayashi, 2019). As indicated by the AMS radiocarbon dates from the charred residues sampled from sherds of early pottery, Ryukisenmon pottery persisted for two millennia, ca. 15, 500–13,000 cal. BP, after the emergence of earliest pottery styles, such as Mumon in Japan from Odaiyamamoto I (16,500–15,000 cal. BP) (Kobayashi 2019). Thus, we expect that early pottery groups (e.g., Mumon) would have occurred initially from Late-Glacial assemblages, prior to the advent of Ryukisenmon pottery around 15,500 to 15,000 cal. BP (Otsuka, 2013). The assemblages for this study were chosen mainly from the “Paleolithic database” compiled by the Japan Palae-olithic Research Association (2010). Although we leveraged the “Paleolithic database” that records the presence/absence code of pottery without radiometric dates, we independently consulted original site reports and research papers to collect radiocarbon dates, in addition to including relevant sites not recorded in the “Paleolithic database”. Radiocarbon dates were calibrated using OxCal ver. 4.4, comparable to IntCal20 (Reimer et al., 2020).

3.2. Transmission of pottery technology across the Late-Glacial Japanese Archipelago

With respect to the emergence and spread of early pottery, we are concerned with cultural transmission with particular attention to the distance decay model, “where the greater the inter-distance between the donor and the recipient, the less likely is the occurrence of a trans-mission event” (Shennan et al., 2015:103; see also Lycett, 2019). The assembled earliest dates of pottery emergence show that the Odaiya-mamoto I is the oldest ages dated to 16,500–15,000 cal. BP (Table 1), we started to see Odaiyamamoto I site as a “donor” and/or “core” (Shennan et al., 2015: ibid) or “center of gravity” (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza,

1971: 680), where the pottery technology was first invented and transmitted to other regional hunter-gatherer societies. Based on this assumption of transmission, this study first hypothesized that the younger the radiocarbon dates, the greater the distance from the site with the earliest pottery (Hypothesis 1). Given the distance decay model, the greater the distance between the recipient sites and the donner site with the earliest pottery, the less frequent the pottery found at the recipient sites would be accepted (Hypothesis 2). This prediction con-siders the situation in which the diffusion of early pottery technology was a single event. If there were multiple waves of diffusion of pottery technologies from a specific core or if diffusion occurred from multiple cores, the spatial patterns of cultural traits would vary.

Regardless of the expected cultural diffusion complexity, the fre-quencies of pottery can also be explained by the sample size effect (e.g., Grayson, 1981). Given this expectation, we first evaluated the effect of sample size on pottery frequency. Sample size effects were compared between size of excavation (m2) that yielded artifact assemblage with potsherd, number of artifacts in an assemblage, and number of potsherds to be recovered (e.g., Nakazawa et al., 2011). After evaluating the effect of sample size on pottery frequency, the above-expected distance decay model that assumes one wave of cultural transmission from the site of the oldest pottery could be properly evaluated.

4. Results

4.1. Reexamination of the dates for early pottery in Japan

There are several styles of early pottery. In his comprehensive book on the study of Jomon pottery, Kobayashi (1994) distinguished three stylistic groups from the pottery industry during the Incipient Jomon Period, nemely Ryukisenmon (linear relief), Tsumegatamon (nail-im-pressed), and Tajomon (cord mark), and hypothesized a diachronic change from Ryukisenmon and Tsumegatamon to Tajomon. After two decades of further investigation, as represented by the earliest pottery from Odaiyamamoto I, potsherds without surface decorations labeled as Mumon (“no decoration”) have come to be recognized as the earliest

Fig. 2. Locations of the Late Glacial sites with early pottery in the Japanese Archipelago. 1. Odaiyamamoto I, 2. Chojakubo, 3. Ushirono- District A, 4. Onigano, 5. Kiriki, 6. Sankakuyama I, 7. Chouchi, 8. Torihama Shell Midden, 9. Taisho 3, 10. Kamikuroiwa Rockshelter, 11. Kubodera-minami, 12. Tazawa, 13. Kosegasawa, 14. Manpukuji No.1, 15. Tsukimino Kamino Loc. 1 Level-I, 16. Fukui Cave, 17. Seikosanso B, 18. Gotenyama District 2 Loc.N.

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style of pottery in Japan (Taniguchi, 1999; Kudo, 2012; Kobayashi, 2019). There are few records comparable to those of Toryumon pottery originally recovered from the layer below the blanketed layer, which yielded Ryukisenmon pottery at the Senpukuji Cave site in northern Kyushu (Aso, 1984; Aso and Shiraishi, 1986), suggesting that Toryumon pottery was a local style prior to the advent of Ryukisenmon style (Kobayashi, 1992; Otsuka, 2013). Current understanding recognizes various styles of pottery groups based on the variation in surface deco-rations, especially Mumon (“no decoration”), Tsumegatamon (“nail--form impression”), and Tajomon (“cord mark”) (Fig. 3). Although there is a consensus that all of these styles occurred in early pottery groups during the Late Glacial, here, we do not consider Shitotsumon identified from Terao/Layer1 (Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education, 1980) because this style has not given adequate radiocarbon dates.

We collected 50 radiocarbon dates sampled from 18 sites with various types of early pottery (Table 1). Dates were evaluated based on the pottery styles. While two kinds of styles (i.e., Ryukisenmon and Tajomon) are identified from the Manpukuji No.1 (Table 1), the ob-tained date is from the Ryukisenmon (Kobayashi, 2019). Table 2

summarizes the dates of the early pottery in the Japanese Archipelago. The date range is represented by the 95% confidence intervals (CI). When multiple dates were available from a single site, we chose the upper confidence limit from the most recent date and the lower confi-dence limit from the oldest date. Therefore, these date intervals show the most conservative range of persistence for early pottery groups. This treatment of dates resulted in the overlap of four pottery groups from ca. 17,000 to 11,000 cal. BP, suggesting that Japanese early pottery per-sisted from the Late Glacial to the onset of Holocene (Tables 1 and 2). Given this conservative estimate, the temporal change from the Mumon to Ryukisenmon (Kobayashi, 2019) was not observed, probably because we employed larger samples than those of Kobayashi (2019). The Mumon, Tsumegatamon, and Ryukisenmon are largely overlapping, while the Tajomon is younger than these three groups. Tajomon is the pottery lasted during the Younger Dryas (12,900–11,500 cal. BP), sup-porting empirical observations on the Late-Glacial Jomon site (e.g., Kanomata, 2007). While the diachronic change from Ryukisenmon to the afterward (Kobayashi, 1992) is consistent with the dates from Tor-ihama Shell Midden (Table 1), this directional change is not prominent

Fig. 3. Examples of early pottery of Japan. 1–4: Mumon (no decoration), 5, 6: Tsumegatamon (nail-form impression), 7: Ryukisenmon, 8: Tajomon. 1–4: from the Tsukimino Kamino Loc. 1 Level-I, 5–7: from the Torihama Shell Midden. Scales are approx-imately 2/3 of the actual size. Pictures are from Yokohama History Museum and Yokohama Home-town History Foundation (1996).

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Table 1 Radiocarbon dates for the Late-Glacial sites (assemblages) with early pottery. Sites are ordered by latitude.

Styles of pottery

Sites Prefectures Mumon Ryukisenmon Tsumegatamon Tajomon Lithic complex/ major stone tools

Dates Lower 95%CI (cal BP)

Upper 95%CI (cal BP)

Lower 95%CI (BC)

Upper 95%CI (BC)

Dating methods

Dated materials Lab Numbers

References

Tachikarushunai Loc. M-1

Hokkaido + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

12380 ± 70 BP

14894 14144 12944 12194 radiocarbon (AMS)

charcoal MTC-17843 Natsuki et al. (2019)



12600 ± 70 BP

15244 14528 13294 12578 radiocarbon (AMS)




12400 ± 70 BP

14927 14177 12977 12227 radiocarbon (AMS)


Taisho 3 Hokkaido + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

12,180 ± 40 BP

14301 13881 12351 11931 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 194630

Kitazawa and Yamahara (2006)


12,200 ± 40 BP

14309 14025 12359 12075 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 194627



12,330 ± 40 BP

14817 14109 12867 12159 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 194628


Odaiyamamoto I Aomori + Mikoshiba- Chojakubo

12,680 ± 140 BP

15567 14358 13617 12408 radiocarbon (AMS)

Charred residue on potsherd

NUTA-6506 Taniguchi et al. (1999)


12,720 ± 160 BP

15656 14357 13706 12407 radiocarbon (AMS)




13,030 ± 170 BP

16116 15131 14166 13181 radiocarbon (AMS)




13,210 ± 160 BP

16327 15369 14377 13419 radiocarbon (AMS)



Odaiyamamoto I Aomori + Mikoshiba- Chojakubo/ projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

13,780 ± 170 BP

17201 16188 15251 14238 radiocarbon (AMS)



Kubodera-minami Ehime + bifacial point 12,280 ± 50 BP

14805 14065 12855 12115 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 136743

Sato and Kasai (2001)

Kubodera-minami Niigata + bifacial point 12,420 ± 50 BP

14921 14261 12971 12311 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 136744



15029 14316 13079 12366 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 136745



15235 14834 13285 12884 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 136746



15054 14451 13104 12501 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 136747



15101 14426 13151 12476 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 140494



15237 14866 13287 12916 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 140495


Tazawa Niigata + bifacial point, stone axe

12,490 ± 40 BP

15004 14357 13054 12407 radiocarbon (AMS)


IAAA- 120329

Kanomata et al. (2018)

(continued on next page)

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Table 1 (continued )

Styles of pottery

Seikosanso B Nagano + Mikoshiba- Chojakubo/ Stemmed point

12,000 ± 40 BP

14025 13794 12075 11844 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 133848

Nakajima and Tsuchida (2000)


12,160 ± 40 BP

14171 13870 12221 11920 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 133849



12,340 ± 50 BP

14830 14104 12880 12154 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 133847


Nakajima B Nagano + bifacial point (willow-leaf shaped), stone axe

12,460 ± 310 BP

15658 13786 13708 11836 radiocarbon (Beta)

charcoal I-13767 Archaeological Research Center of Nagano Prefecture (1987), Otake (2016)

Maedakochi/ Concentration 6

Tokyo + bifacial point (willow-leaf shaped)

12865 ± 40 BP

15567 15219 13617 13269 radiocarbon (AMS)

charcoal TKA-19347 Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education (2002), Morisaki et al. (2019)



12870 ± 45 BP

15572 15226 13622 13276 radiocarbon (AMS)




12945 ± 40 BP

15636 15304 13686 13354 radiocarbon (AMS)




13045 ± 45 BP

15801 15440 13851 13490 radiocarbon (AMS)




13095 ± 40 BP

15850 15550 13900 13600 radiocarbon (AMS)


Gotenyama/District 2 Loc.N

Tokyo + bifacial point, stone axe

13,200 ± 70 BP

16071 15631 14121 13681 radiocarbon (AMS)

charcoal TTKG-B Yasui et al. (2004) ; Kobayashi (2019)

Torihama Shell Midden (Tajomon)

Fukui + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

9930 ±45 BP

11610 11238 9660 9288 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 358838

Kudo et al. (2016)



9970 ±45 BP

11690 11255 9740 9305 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 358836

Kudo et al. (2016)



10,150 ± 40 BP

11941 11509 9991 9559 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 358837

Kudo et al. (2016)



10,145 ± 45 BP

11942 11408 9992 9458 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta- 358839

Kudo et al. (2016)

Torihama Shell Midden (Tsumegatamon)


10,280 ± 30 BP

12433 11830 10483 9880 radiocarbon (AMS)

PLD-26691 Kudo et al. (2016)

Torihama Shell Midden (Tsumegatamon)


10,385 ± 30 BP

12477 12056 10527 10106 radiocarbon (AMS)

PLD-26690 Kudo et al. (2016)

Fukui + 12,220 ± 80 BP

14813 13860 12863 11910 radiocarbon (AMS)

IAAA- 30476

Kobayashi (2007)

(continued on next page)

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Table 1 (continued )

Styles of pottery

Torihama Shell Midden (Ryukisenmon)

projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

Manpukuji No.1 Kanagawa + + bifacial point, stemmed points, stone axe

12,330 ± 40

14817 14109 12867 12159 radiocarbon (AMS)

Charred residue on potsherd (Ryukisenmon)

Beta- 191840

Kitahara and Imaizumi (2005), Kobayashi (2019)

Tsukimino Kamino Loc. 1 Level-I

Kanagawa + bifacial point 12,480 ± 50

14996 14323 13046 12373 radiocarbon (AMS)

Beta158196 Naito and Aida (1989), Kobayashi (2019)

Kamikuroiwa Rockshelter

Ehime + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

12,420 ± 60 BP

14937 14233 12987 12283 radiocarbon (AMS)

charcoal MTC04312 Kobayashi (2019)

Kamikuroiwa Rockshelter

Ehime + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

12,530 ± 40 BP

15087 14511 13137 12561 radiocarbon (AMS)

charcoal Beta- 201260

Kobayashi (2019)

Fukui Cave/Layer III Nagasaki + mircoblade 12,959 ± 38 BP

15653 15319 13703 13369 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-25711 Kudo (2016)


16008 15710 14058 13760 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-25708 Kudo (2016)


16478 16168 14528 14218 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-25710 Kudo (2016)

Fukui Cave/Layer II Nagasaki + mircoblade 12,470 ± 50 BP

14982 14318 13032 12368 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-21101 Kudo (2016)


15024 14466 13074 12516 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-25709 Kudo (2016)


15203 14951 13253 13001 radiocarbon (AMS)


PLD-25713 Kudo (2016)


15657 13605 13707 11655 radiocarbon (Beta)

charcoal Gaku-949 Tozawa (1994)

Onigano Kagoshima + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head), bifacial points

11,880 ± 60 BP

14003 13527 12053 11577 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 177289

Okita and Dogome (2004), Kobayashi (2019)

Onigano Kagoshima + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head), bifacial points

12,180 ± 40 BP

14301 13881 12351 11931 radiocarbon (AMS)


Beta- 177290

Okita and Dogome (2004), Kobayashi (2019)

Sankakuyama I Kagoshima + projectile point (unstemmed arrow head)

12,080 ± 70 BP

14094 13796 12144 11846 radiocarbon (AMS)


MTC05834 Fujisaki and Nakamura (2006); Kobayashi (2019)

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in terms of the conservative range of dates for the early pottery groups. This is mainly because the association of early pottery with radiocarbon dates has increased in the last two decades due to the efforts of ar-chaeologists working on dating early potteries (e.g., Kudo, 2012; Kuni-kita et al., 2013; Kobayashi, 2019). The earliest pottery found from Taisho 3 (Hokkaido) reported in 2006 (Kitazawa and Yamahara, 2006) has consistent dates of 14,800–13,800 cal. BP, apparently prior to the onset of the Younger Dryas, and some sites with Ryukisenmon pottery, such as Seikosanso B (Nakajima and Tsuchida, 2000) and Tazawa (Kanomata et al., 2018; Kato et al., 2019), show dates older than the onset of the Younger Dryas (Table 1). Overlaps of dates for pottery styles warn that not all early pottery styles are temporally discrete units. It is also illustrated in the empirical record that several pottery styles are sometimes identified from a single cultural deposit of a site. For example, both Ryukisenmon and Tsumegatamon styles are associated together from the Sankakuyama I site (Kagoshima Prefecture) and Hinata Cave (Yamagata Prefecture) (Sagawa and Suzuki, 2006).

4.2. An evaluation of transmission of pottery technology

The relationships between the size of excavation (m2) that yielded artifact assemblage with potsherd, the number of artifacts in an assemblage, and the number of potsherds are investigated to verify the effect of sample size on pottery frequency. No correlations are found between size of excavation (m2) and number of artifacts recovered (Pearson’s r = 0.087, df = 25, p = 0.668), between number of artifacts recovered and number of potsherds (Pearson’s r = 0.161, df = 25, p =0.422), and between size of excavation (m2) and number of potsherds recovered (Pearson’s r = 0.044, df = 25, p = 0.827). These results suggest that the amount of pottery identified from the Late Glacial sites is not a function of the size of excavations or excavated samples. Larger sites do not necessarily yield more potsherds than small sites, and vice versa. The small contribution of the sample size effect allows us to evaluate the model of single-wave cultural diffusion from the site with the oldest dates of pottery to the other Late-Glacial sites with pottery.

Fig. 4 shows the distances (km) of sites with early pottery departed from Odaiyamamoto I where the earliest dates of pottery (N = 62) are plotted against the radiocarbon dates of early pottery. We omitted the dates for Tajomon (11,942–11,238 cal. BP) from Fig. 4 because they are apparently younger than the other dated groups of early pottery (Table 2). Sites located above 35 ◦N show younger dates at around 12,000 cal. BP, as their locations are apart from the location of Odaiyamamoto I. Conversely, sites located more than 1000 km from Odaiyamamoto I tend to have older dates as their distances of sites from Odaiyamamoto I increase.

In terms of the one-wave cultural transmission model, this pattern indicates that pottery technology was progressively transmitted from Odaiyamamoto I to the sites, particularly to the ones located around 35

Fig. 5. Ratio of potsherds to lithic artifacts plotted against site distance from the Odaiyamamoto I (Left), and against radiocarbon dates (cal. BP) (Right).

Table 2 Summary of estimated dates for the stylistic groups of early pottery in Japan.

Pottery types N of14C dates

Calibrated dates bounded by the oldest and youngest 95% CI

Notes

Mumon (no decoration)

12 17201–14358 Both upper and lower dates are from the dates of potsherds from Odaiyamamoto I, considered as the Late- Glacial site with the oldest dates in Japan

Tsumegatamon (nail-form impressed)

10 16478–13881

Ryukisenmon (linear-leaf)

16 16071–12106

Tajomon (cord mark)

4 11942–11238 Dates are only from the samples of Torihama Shell Midden

Fig. 4. Distances (km) of the Late Glacial sites from the Odaiyamamoto I site plotted against radiocarbon ages of sites (BP). Diamond symbols represent radiocarbon dates of early pottery. Degrees of north latitudes (N) are colored. Diamonds in dashed lines are dates from same site (i.e., Odaiyamamoto I and Fukui Cave).

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◦N, such as those in southern Kanto regions (Honshu Island). However, no correlation was found between the dates and distances (Pearson’s r =0.30, df = 11, p = 0.3178). This result does not appear to support Hy-pothesis 1 (i.e., the younger the radiocarbon dates, the greater the dis-tance from the site with the earliest pottery).

With respect to Hypothesis 2 (i.e., the greater the distance between the recipient sites and the donner site with the earliest pottery, the less frequent the pottery found at the recipient sites would be accepted), the pottery frequency assessed by the relative amount of pottery to lithics (number of potsherds divided by number of lithic artifacts) was exam-ined relative to the distances from Odaiyamamoto I and radiocarbon dates (Fig. 5). No correlation was found between the pottery frequencies and distances of the sites from Odaiyamamoto I (Pearson’s r = 0.12, df = 11, p = 0.7251). In contrast, there was a weak negative correlation between the pottery frequencies and radiocarbon dates of the sites (Pearson’s r = − 0.7442, df = 10, p = 0.0055). As shown in Fig. 5, the number of plotted samples that have both radiocarbon dates and amounts of potsherds to be recorded is small. Although this small sample size can potentially encompass the effect of sampling bias, the fre-quencies of potsherds relative to lithic artifacts increase as time pro-gresses. This pattern also does not support Hypothesis 2 predicted by employing the distance decay model.

5. Discussion

Our examination shows that the diffusion of early pottery technology in Japan does not support archaeological expectations derived from the distance decay model. In contrast, the presence of pottery increased in the assemblages during the Late Glacial, suggesting that the adoption of pottery technology progressed at the regional scale. The time depth to achieve proliferation was 2500–3000 years estimated from the persis-tent duration of early pottery styles (Table 1). This implies that the adoption of pottery technology took a certain extent after it was invented and transmitted through groups of hunter-gatherers. This probably occurred because it took a certain time to evaluate the per-formance characteristics of pottery to pre-existing vessels (Schiffer, 2010), presumably baskets made by organic materials such as fiber woven (Kono, 1976), sometimes preserved in the early Holocene Jomon sites (e.g., Yanagihara, 2008), and bark and/or animal skins. As the evaluation progressed, firm knowledge of early pottery production and use would have accumulated in regional hunter-gatherer societies. A few millennia to adopt pottery technology might have been caused by the population density and migratory frequency of hunter-gatherers (e.g., Powell et al., 2010). While we have no supportive data of Late-Glacial demography, a seemingly slow accumulation of knowledge in pottery use would have eventually extended beyond a single region as potters moved across territories and boundaries embedded in regional societies (e.g., Peterson, 1975; Cashdan, 1983; Dillian, 2003). Long-distance travel of hunter-gatherers and/or extended network of material trans-fers are indicated by the Late Glacial archaeological record, such as the circulation of obsidian in northern Japan (e.g., Sasaki and Kanomata, 2015) and the widely distributed wedge-shaped microblade core tech-nology (e.g., Yamada, 2006; Sakuma, 2017). Both travel and exchange networks would have given pathways to transmit pottery technology.

What makes the issue of early pottery adoption and transmission in the Japanese Archipelago complicated is that there appear to have been multiple cores. As shown in Fig. 4, Fukui Cave (northern Kyushu Island) besides Odaiyamamoto I (northern Honshu) have older dates for early pottery. Since these two sites are located far apart (1291 km) with lat-itudinal difference (41 ◦N for Odaiyamamoto I and 33 ◦N for Fukui Cave), ecological conditions for these two sites would be apparently different, even in the Late Glacial period. Indeed, environmental prox-ies, notably pollen record, show that the Late Glacial vegetation in northern Honshu (40 ◦N), where Odaiyamamoto I site is located, was a subarctic coniferous forest (Yoshida, 2006), while that of northern Kyushu where Fukui Cave is located was characterized by the deciduous

broad-leaved forest (Ooi, 2016). The contrasting environments between the Late Glacial northern Honshu and northern Kyushu imply that the emergence of early pottery in Japan is not explicitly explained by the model of culture ecology. That is, differences in regional ecology do not account for the presence and absence of early pottery. Likewise, remotely occurring earlier potteries could be independent innovations (i.e., convergence). On the other hand, the lithic technologies between Odaiyamato I and Fukui Cave are also different. Stone tools from Odaiyamato I are characterized by blades, blade tools (e.g., burins, endscrapers), bifaces (“arrowheads-like tools”), and a stone axe (Tani-guchi, 1999), while those of Fukui Cave/Layer III are remarked by microblades manufactured from wedge-shaped microblade cores (Ser-izawa and Kamaki, 1965; Sasebo City Board of Education, 2016).

From the macro-regional perspective, early pottery associated with microblade technology is skewed to the Late Glacial sites of the south-western part of the Japanese Archipelago, notably in Kyushu Island such as Fukui Cave (Serizawa and Kamaki, 1965), Senpukuji Cave (Aso, 1984), Chouchi (Kiire Town Board of Education, 1999), and Chaen (Kawamichi, 1998), and the middle of Honshu, such as the open-air sites of Terao/Layer 1 (Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education, 1980), and Katsusaka (Aoki et al., 1993) in the southern Kanto Plain, not found in northeastern Japan (i.e., northern Honshu and Hokkaido). In contrast, the association of early pottery and arrowhead is not ubiquitous in Late Glacial assemblages, while a small number of sites are located both in southern Kyushu (e.g., Chochi) and central Honshu (e.g., Seikosanso B). The observed geographic differences in the stone tool components with early pottery imply that tool inventories of regional hunter-gatherers varied around the time of their adoption of pottery technology. Despite the regional difference in lithic technologies, pottery as a new innovative utensil was gradually incorporated into the technological repertoire among the Late Glacial hunter-gatherers. If adoption of pot-tery was a gradual process that lasted until the completion of the pan-regional proliferation of the Tajomon pottery at ca. 11,000 cal. BP (Table 2), the Late-Glacial hunter-gatherers would have maintained the knowledge of making and using pottery nearly by the end of the Younger Dryas. This inference further strengthens the perception that hunter-gatherer societies in the Japanese Archipelago were not dis-rupted by the environmental change of the Younger Dryas (e.g., Naka-zawa et al., 2011).

The emergence of early pottery in Japan has now been regarded as a Late-Glacial innovation. Although cultural diffusion is an appropriate mechanism to transmit the knowledge of pottery technology among regional hunter-gatherer societies in Japan, a time-progressive pattern that supports the diffusion of early pottery is not observed. In contrast, pottery technology seems to be gradually visible in regional hunter- gatherer societies once it emerged. Since we do not have enough dates from the Late Glacial sites without pottery, it does not allow one to distinguish social circumstances as to whether sites without pottery represent indigenous regional hunter-gatherers who denied adopting pottery technology or those who were isolated enough not to acquire information on pottery technology. At the same time, our assumption of one-wave cultural diffusion would be so simple that the tested hypoth-eses were inadequate to explain the temporal and spatial patterns in early pottery transmission across the Japanese Archipelago. For the future study, it will be worthwhile to implement the situation of multiple waves into distance decay model and geographically biased trans-mission considering differential rates of transmission between terrestrial and coastal routes.

Besides pottery, stone axes including edge-ground axes are often found in the Late-Glacial stone tool inventory, as represented in the Mikoshiba-Chojakubo technocomplex, but have long been absent in the Japanese Upper Paleolithic record since its earlier emergence during the late Marine Isotope Stage 3, ca. 38,000–32,000 cal. BP (Tsutsumi, 2012). Bifaces (bifacial points) also reemerged after its initial advent during the late Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 21,000–20,000 cal. BP (e.g., Karube, 1994; Sekiguchi et al., 2011; Sakashita, 2011; Nakamura, 2014), while

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bifaces co-occur with the Late Glacial pottery exhibit technological and morphological diversification from small projectiles such as arrowheads and stemmed points to long and narrow spears (e.g., Hashizume, 2015; Nakata, 2016) made of a variety of blanks from bifacial thinning flakes to angular nodules (e.g., Naganuma, 2004). Since such innovative tools appeared during the Late Glacial, they are characterized by functional and stylistic variability in technologies. This could also be a manifesta-tion of accumulated cultural knowledge among regional groups of hunter-gatherers (e.g., Mesoudi and Thornton, 2018). What we do not know is the extent to which the Late Glacial hunter-gatherers in Japan enhanced their fitness using innovative technologies, and the extent to which changes in diet breadth were involved. Along with continuous effort to accumulate radiometric dates for the Late Glacial assemblages without pottery (e.g., Morisaki and Natsuki, 2017), future research will necessarily evaluate the relationship between hunter-gatherers’ inno-vation and cultural diffusion through an explicit comparison between pottery and stone tool technologies. Such studies can also address the ultimate question of how mobile hunter-gatherers have innovated and chosen technologies toward sedentary lifeway.

6. Conclusion

Although one-wave diffusion that we tested by distance decay model is a pattern of cultural diffusion, the present study demonstrates that cultural diffusion does not fully account for the emergence and spread of early pottery in the Late-Glacial Japan. Rather, proliferation of pottery technology at the regional scale was progressed for millennia by the end of the Younger Dryas, as regional hunter-gatherer societies maintaining varied lithic technologies gradually incorporated pottery technology into their technological repertoire. In combining a comparable dataset of the Late-Glacial assemblages without pottery, continuous explora-tions into the emergence and spread of early pottery will lead further understanding of the nature of transition from nomadic to sedentary lifeways of hunter-gatherers in Japan and beyond.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. Fumie Iizuka, Karisa Terry, and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft. The inter-library loan system and archaeological library at the School of Humanities and Human Sciences of Hokkaido University are helpful to conduct research on archaeological site reports. This research derives from a joint project, entitled “Cultural history of PaleoAsia: Integrative research on the formative processes of modern human cultures in Asia,” directed by Yoshihiro Nishiaki (The University of Tokyo) funded by the Grant-in- Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Grant No. 1802 for FY2016–2020) and “A study of the formation of Mikoshiba lithic in-dustry and its characteristics” directed by Takashi Tsutsumi for Scien-tific Research (C) (Grant 17K03216 for FY2017–2020) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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