Numbers of pit dwellings in early Jomon Moroiso stage sites.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to illustrate a method for estimating the number of simultaneously occupied dwellings in a site, and to test it by applying it to Jomon settlement data. Data are taken from 51 Early Jomon sites of the Moroiso pottery stage (ca 5000 B. P.) in the Kanto district. All the Moroiso stage dwellings in each site are divided into six sub-stages based upon Moroiso pottery sub-types. 88 percent of all the cases analyzed in the paper are found to be composed of between one to four dwellings per sub-stage. The dominance of small occupations is apparent in all six of the Moroiso sub-stages. This has important consequences for studies of Jomon population and sedentism.