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Åmori KaizukaÂ
(Omori Shell Mound)
The other day I wrote about Åmori and I mentioned that there was a paleolithic trash dump there that was the first archaeological dig in Japan. I had a little free time so I decided to check it out and take some pictures for the site. Actually, it was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be, but I don’t want the pictures to go to waste. Hopefully, there’s some interesting stuff in here for you.






The structure in the background seems to be a reinforcement of the side of the shell mound. If you walk around it, you can actually go up to the top and get a feel for how tall the mound actually is. I’ll explain the water in the middle later.
















There IS an interesting story related to the site. When Morse discovered it containing ceramics and human bones, he concluded that this were the remains of paleolithic Ainu who had been – obviously to him – canibals. This was a big scandal throughout Japan: CANIBALS IN TOKYO! This irritating hypothesis was then refuted by the German adventurer and collector of Japanese art Henry von Siebold, second and younger son of the famous physician Philipp Franz von Siebold who was based on Dejima in the 1820s,had explored the country and had become the first foreign advisor to the newly founded ministry of foreign affairs in 1861. Anyway, Henry could prove that Morse was wrong, because the Ainu didn’t know ceramics arts and there were no traces of cannibalism in the Ainu culture. This was a great relief to Japanese intellectuals like Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Waseda university.
Thanks for the comment and that is an interesting story. I didn’t know about the cannibal thing. That’s crazy. lol
BTW – I think you mean Keio University, not Waseda.
Cool Place! Thanks for the trip report.
My pleasure!!
Nice find. It’s so hard to find any English information about archaeology in Japan.
I agree!! And it’s not a subject I know a lot about in Japan, so I hope I did it a fair service.