Reborn in Fire: Jōmon Pottery
What can the ancient culture of Japan teach us about living in harmony?
The earliest ceramic vessels in Japan, simple rounded pots over 16,000 years old, were found in the Kantō plains and are among the oldest known examples in the world. Later pots from the same region become increasingly elaborate and decorated with markings from fingernails and rope pressed into the clay while still wet — in fact, the name of the prehistoric culture that produced them derives from a term meaning ‘straw-rope-pattern’: Jōmon. Examples of this distinctive ceramic style were first discovered by American archaeologist Edward S Morse in 1877 at the Omori shell mound site near Tokyo, and he gave the pottery the name jōmon, which was then adopted to describe the people who created this pottery.
Eurocentric art history often focuses on the beauty of Greek pottery, so I have only recently discovered the astounding ceramics of the Jōmon culture of Japan, which easily rivals the skill of Greek potters but uses very different forms. The Jōmon culture flourished in Northeast Japan over 15,000 years ago and endured for around 10,000 years. Thus, they are contemporaries of the Stone Age people in Britain who created Stonehenge!
A recent Exhibition at the Stonehenge visitor centre examined the differences and similarities…
