 | |
| Alternative names | Incipient Okhotsk |
|---|---|
| Dates | 2500–1600 BP |
| Followed by | Okhotsk culture |
The Susuya culture, alternatively referred to as the earliest phase of the Okhotsk culture by some scholars, [1] is an archaeological coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer culture that developed around the southern coastal regions of the Sea of Okhotsk, including Sakhalin and northern Hokkaido.
Maeda (1987) considered the Susuya type pottery to be the marker of the earliest phase of the Okhotsk culture. However, some archaeologists argue that the Towada phase was the beginning of the Okhotsk culture and that the Susuya phase preceded the Okhotsk culture (Ohyi, 1982). It is certain that the Towada phase was included in the Okhotsk culture based on the results of not only archaeological investigations but also osteological studies. The present lack of human skeletal remains of the Susuya phase prevents definite statement whether the Susuya phase belonged to the Okhotsk culture. [1]
Susuya ceramics are represented by round, sharp, and flat-based vessels with a wide open mouth. Decoration consists of compositions of string and comb impressions. Sites containing pottery of this kind are grouped within a separate Susuya culture. These are associated with Epi-Jomon traditions dating from the 5th to the 4th centuries in southern Sakhalin and from the 2nd to the 5th centuries in southern Sakhalin and northern Hokkaido. [2]
The subsistence pattern of the Susuya culture was much the same as that of the Okhotsk, consisting of sea-mammal hunting, sea gathering and some land gathering. [3] The Susuya focussed on the processing of intermediate trophic-level aquatic resources, and the early Okhotsk specialised towards isotopically enriched marine products. In the Susuya Culture household at Kafukai 2 (~100–500 CE), biomolecular evidence indicates that ceramic cooking pots were primarily used to process intermediate trophic-level anadromous resources, mixed sporadically with foods from the marine, terrestrial animal and plant food webs. [4] By paying close attention to the species of domestic animals, more dog remains than pigs have been found in the Susuya Shell Mound and Rutaka Site. [5]
The Ainu are an ethnic group of related indigenous peoples native to northern Japan including Hokkaido and Northeast Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Khabarovsk Krai; they have occupied these areas known to them as "Ainu Mosir", since before the arrival of the modern Japanese and Russians. These regions are often referred to as Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts.
The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and north. The northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named for the port of Okhotsk, itself named for the Okhota River.
The Japanese sea lion was an aquatic mammal that became extinct in the 1970s. It was considered to be a subspecies of the related California sea lion until 2003. They inhabited the western North Pacific and its marginal seas including the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan, especially around the coastal areas of the Japanese Archipelago and the Korean Peninsula. They generally bred on sandy beaches which were open and flat, but sometimes in rocky areas. They were hunted commercially in the 1900s, leading to their extinction.
The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. The links between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic.
A midden is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics, and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation.
The Japanese Paleolithic period is the period of human inhabitation in Japan predating the development of pottery, generally before 10,000 BC. The starting dates commonly given to this period are from around 40,000 BC; although any date of human presence before 35,000 BC is controversial, with artifacts supporting a pre-35,000 BC human presence on the archipelago being of questionable authenticity. The period extended to the beginning of the Mesolithic Jōmon period, or around 14,000 BC.
The toggling harpoon is an ancient weapon and tool used in whaling to impale a whale when thrown. Unlike earlier harpoon versions which had only one point, a toggling harpoon has a two-part point. One half of the point is firmly attached to the thrusting base, while the other half of the point is fitted over this first point like a cap and attached to the rest of the point with sinew or another string-like material. When the harpoon is thrust into an animal, the top half of the point detaches and twists horizontally into the animal under the skin, allowing hunters to haul the animal to ship or shore. This harpoon technology lodges the toggling head of the harpoon underneath both the animal's skin and blubber, and instead lodges the point in the muscle, which also prevents the harpoon slipping out.
Jōmon people is the generic name of the hunter-gatherer population that lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period. The Jōmon people constituted a coherent population but displayed geographically defined regional subgroups.
Rebun Island is an island in the Sea of Japan off the northwestern tip of Hokkaidō, Japan. The island sits 50 kilometres (31 mi) off the coast of Hokkaidō. Rebun stretches 29 kilometres (18 mi) from north to south and 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from east to west. The island covers approximately 80 square kilometres (31 sq mi). Rebun Island is located 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) northwest of Rishiri Island, and the two islands are separated by the Rebun Channel.
The Satsumon culture is a partially agricultural, archeological culture of northern Honshu and southern Hokkaido that has been identified as Emishi, as a Japanese-Emishi mixed culture, as the incipient modern Ainu, or with all three synonymously. Scholars frequently equate Satsumon people with the Emishi, a culture that emerged in northern Honshu as early as the 5th century CE, and in being ancestral to the Ainu people. This proposition is based on similarities between Ainu and Emishi skeletal remains as well as a number of place names across Honshu that resemble Ainu words. It is possible that the emergence of Satsumon culture in Hokkaido was triggered by immigration of Emishi people from Honshu. However, there are many differences between Emishi and Satsumon. For instance, horse riding and rice agriculture, neither of which were present in ancient Hokkaido, were both central to Emishi lifestyle. It may have arisen as a merger of the Yayoi–Kofun and the Jōmon cultures. The Satsumon culture appears to have spread from northeastern Honshu into southern Hokkaido. The Satsumon culture is regarded to be ancestral to the later Ainu culture, under some influence of the Okhotsk culture.
The Okhotsk culture is an archaeological coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer culture that developed around the southern coastal regions of the Sea of Okhotsk, including Sakhalin, northeastern Hokkaido, and the Kuril Islands during the last half of the first millennium to the early part of the second. The Okhotsk are often associated to be the ancestors of the Nivkhs, while others argue them to be identified with early Ainu-speakers. It is suggested that the bear cult, a practice shared by various Northern Eurasian peoples, the Ainu and the Nivkhs, was an important element of the Okhotsk culture but was uncommon in Jomon period Japan. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Okhotsk culture proper originated in the 5th century AD from the Susuya culture of southern Sakhalin and northwestern Hokkaido.
The Jeulmun pottery period is an archaeological era in Korean prehistory broadly spanning the period of 8000–1500 BC. This period subsumes the Mesolithic and Neolithic cultural stages in Korea, lasting ca. 8000–3500 BC and 3500–1500 BC, respectively. Because of the early presence of pottery, the entire period has also been subsumed under a broad label of "Korean Neolithic".
In Japanese history, the Jōmon period is the time between c. 14,000 and 300 BC, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity. The name "cord-marked" was first applied by the American zoologist and orientalist Edward S. Morse, who discovered sherds of pottery in 1877 and subsequently translated it into Japanese as Jōmon. The pottery style characteristic of the first phases of Jōmon culture was decorated by impressing cords into the surface of wet clay and is generally accepted to be among the oldest in the world.
The Ōyu Stone Circles is a late Jōmon period archaeological site in the city of Kazuno, Akita Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan. The remains were designated a Special National Historic Site of Japan in 1956 by the Japanese government. The site is located approximately ten minutes by car from Towada-Minami on the JR East Hanawa Line of the Towada Interchange on the Tohoku Expressway.
From 1264 to 1308, the Mongol Empire made several incursions into the island of Sakhalin off the east coast of Siberia to aid their Nivkh allies against the Ainu, who had been expanding north from Hokkaido. The Ainu put up a tenacious resistance, even launching a counter-attack on Mongol positions on the continent across the Strait of Tartary in 1297, but finally capitulated to the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China in 1308.
The Zoku-Jōmon period (続縄文時代), also referred to as the Epi-Jōmon period, is the time in Japanese prehistory that saw the flourishing of the Zoku-Jōmon culture, a continuation of Jōmon culture in northern Tōhoku and Hokkaidō that corresponds with the Yayoi period and Kofun period elsewhere. Zoku-Jōmon in turn gave way to Satsumon around the seventh century or in the Nara period (710–794). The "Yayoinisation" of northeast Honshū took place in the mid-Yayoi period; use of the term Zoku-Jōmon is then confined to those, in Hokkaidō, who did not "become Yayoi". Despite the elements of continuity emphasised by the name, which include the continuing production of cord-marked ceramics, ongoing employment of stone technology, and non-transition to rice-based agriculture, all Jōmon hallmarks, the Zoku-Jōmon period nevertheless saw a "major break in mobility and subsistence patterns".
Nemuro City Museum of History and Nature is a museum-equivalent facility in Nemuro, Hokkaidō, Japan. It was established by the City of Nemuro in 2004 and is classed as a general museum, collecting and exhibiting materials relating both to the humanities and the natural sciences.
The Tobinitai culture (トビニタイ文化) is an archaeological culture of eastern Hokkaidō. It has been described as a "hybridization" of the Okhotsk culture and the Satsumon culture.
The Ainu languages, sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands.
Ainu culture is the culture of the Ainu people, from around the 13th century to the present. Today, most Ainu people live a life superficially similar to that of mainstream Japanese people, partly due to cultural assimilation. However, while some people conceal or downplay their Ainu identity, Ainu culture is still retained among many groups. The Ainu way of life is called Ainupuri in the Ainu language. The unique Ainu patterns and oral literature have been selected as features of Hokkaido Heritage.