The Burried Mirror Feature at the Tabata Fudozaka Site in Kita Ward, Tokyo

• Published in: Nihon Kokogaku(Journal of the Japanese Archaeological Association) Vol. 9; no. 13; pp. 123 - 130
• Main Author: ARAI, Satoru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: THE JAPANESE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 2002; 一般社団法人 日本考古学協会
• Subjects: Settlement; ritual; deposition; Kofun period; southern Kanto region; 南関東; 古墳時代; 集落,祭祀,埋納
• ISSN: 1340-8488; 1883-7026
• DOI: 10.11215/nihonkokogaku1994.9.123

The subject of this contribution is a summary of the investigation of a pit from the latter part of the Early Kofun period, detected at the Tabata Fudozaka site in Kita Ward, Tokyo, and a consideration of its nature. While discoveries of settlements of this period are rare in the southern Kanto region, at the Tabata Fudozaka site a pit was discovered belonging to such a settlement, in which a bead-design mirror, beads, a whetstone, and sherds of smashed pottery, etc. were deposited. As a result of the investigation it is also supposed, with regard to the utilization of this feature, that for a certain period a rectangular space within the pit surrounded with boards was used, and that at some point this space was filled in, and the mirror, beads, whetstone, and potsherds, etc. were buried. It was also inferred that the completion of the deposition coincided with the abandonment of the settlement. In the environs of Tabata Fudozaka, sites related to settlement die out in the latter half of the Early Kofun period, after which settlements reappear only in the latter part of the seventh century. It can be read from this that during the period in which settlement ceased, paraphernalia used in ritual up to that point were buried collectively, as a symbolic act. As to the significance of this phenomenon, while considerations in light of previously published data are currently still underway, it is surmised that when small mirrors remain in settlement sites, large-scale changes have occurred involving the settlement as a whole.