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Burials of kings or of tribal leaders? Interpreting the evidence from

monumental tombs in southern Japan

Article  in  Archaeology International · December 2000

DOI: 10.5334/ai.0415

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Koji Mizoguchi

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A R C H A E O L O G Y I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Burials of kings or of tribal leaders? Interpreting the evidence from

monumental tombs in southern Japan Koji Mizoguchi

In recent decades, Japanese archaeologists have carried out a great many new excavations and have added immensely to knowledge of Japan's prehistoric and historic past, but interpre­ tation of this vast body of evidence has aroused controversy. Here the Institute's newly appointed lecturer in Japanese archaeology examines the much debated question of how hierarchical soci­ eties developed in Japan between 200 BC and AD 300.

T he Yayoi period (c. 400 BC to AD 2 5 0 / 3 0 0 ) is widely regarded as a unique period in Japanese history. It saw the beginning of systematic paddy-field (wet­

rice) agriculture, which was introduced from the Korean peninsula and ignited a process of increasing social stratification in larger, more integrated and hierarchical social units.

From the vantage point of the present, people often seek to idealize the past and to create imaginary continuities between

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Figure 1 Northern Kyush u, showing the loca tion of three cemeteries of the early Middle Yayoi phase mentioned in the text. { 1 ) Yoshinogari, (2) Kuriyama, (3) Kuma­ Nishioda.

then and now. In the case of the Yayoi period, the Japanese often try to recognize in it the roots of their modern industrial nation. During the Yayoi, various techno­ logical ideas and material items were imported from the Korean peninsula. For example, bronze weapons and other implements, and the technology of bronze making, were initially introduced from there. However, these innovations were rapidly adopted and modified to fit local socio-cultural, economic and political conditions. Bronze weapons, such as dag­ gers and spearheads, quickly lost their original functions and became ritual items. A perception widely shared among the general public in Japan is that, since the end of the Second World War, Japa­ nese industry has been successfu l in importing ideas from abroad, refining them and exporting them back. Those Jap­ anese who identify with the image of mod­ ern Japan as a successful industrial nation readily see parallels between themselves and the Yayoi people, despite the fact that there is no meaningful historical continu­ ity between that period and the present.

Sometimes this tendency to use the past in Japan to reinforce present-day percep­ tions takes a different direction, by depict­ ing Yayoi society as having been more advanced and sophisticated than the archaeological evidence indicates. It is widely accepted that the hunter-gatherer society o f the preceding Jomon period (c. 1 0 000 to 4 0 0 BC) was organized upon com­ munal princip les, with minimal social dif­ ferentiation. However, it is often argued that, once the Yayoi period began, social stratification increased very rapidly, and that by the end of the Early Yayoi phase, around 200 BC, king-like figures had already emerged. In support of this claim, reference is often made to the dead who were buried in pottery-jar coffins, with bronze items and other grave goods, in monumental tombs in northern Kyushu (Fig. 1 ) .

A serious problem with this interpreta­ tion is that the nature of these king-like individuals has not been examined closely enough. Thus, questions such as whether their status was achieved personally or ascribed to them, and whether they

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formed dynastic lines of inhe:-:·a� not been fully investigated. -:- � , - tions n e e d rigorous investioatwn .:: of general anthropological theor; to help us understand Yayoi SOLe ization and compare it with o· :1�r � agrarian societies elsewhere in ;.he \ - . However, many Japanese archaeo ;: - · " are reluctant to introduce c o rn arc.· ; e anthropological concepts and da a n o their interpretations of the archaeo �ical evidence. This is partly the resu. o. a deep-rooted Japanese tradition of de. n:ng archaeology as a subdiscipline of hi"tory.

With the above reservation in m ' n d . we can now attempt to recon true the social organization o f the Yayoi period from the evidence of mortuar\· archaeol­ ogy, specifically from my re earch on the jar-burial cemeteries of northern K n1shu.

Burials of kings? Jar coffins are a characteristic feature of the Yayoi culture of northern Kyushu. Their style changes through time and it is possi­ ble to classify them into temporal types and establish a fine-grained typo-chronol­ ogy (Fig. 2). By using this method we can accurately reconstruct the processes by which individual jar-burial cemeteries were formed and trace changes in their spatial organization (Fig. 3 ) . Burial jars also protect from decay the skeletal remains they contain, and DNA samples have been successfully extracted from them.1 Jar-burial cemeteries provide the archaeologist with invaluable information for the investigation of Yayoi social struc­ ture and its transformation.

The deposition of bronze weapons in cemeteries began about 2 0 0 BC, at the end of the Early Yayoi phase. Jar burials with bronze weapons and other grave goo d s , s u c h a s jade b e a d s a n d necklaces m a d e of glass and stone beads, often form rectan­ gular cemeteries (here referred to as com­ pound cemeteri e s ) , some o f which are covered by an earthen mound.

The most famous example of a com­ pound cemetery is the one at the site of Yoshinogari (Figs 1, 4). The mound was used as a fort during the medieval period and was recently heavily ploughed, but its original size can be reconstructed. It meas­ ured approximately 4 0 m by 60 m. Four­ teen j ar burials have been excavated so far, eight of which contained grave goods. Jar burial S)1006, situated at the centre of the rectangular mound, is the oldest burial in the cemetery. It contained a hilted bronze dagger and an ornament consisting of sev­ eral glass beads. Each of the other seven burials contained a bronze dagger (Figs 5 , 6 ) . A l l the skeletons whose sex could be determined (of those buried with bronze weapons in northern Kyushu during the Middle Yayoi phase) have been found to be male, 2 which means that at least eight out of fourteen individuals buried at the Y oshinogari cemetery were male.

The discovery o f the Yoshinogari site in

Typo-chronological sequence

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Calendar years

BC 2 7 0

240

2 1 0

1 5 0

1 2 0

60

30 BC

AD 3 0

6 0

1 2 0

1 5 0

1 8 0

2 1 0

240

2 7 0

Figure 2 Typo-chron ology of b urial jars. The calen dric dates given are based on a combina tion of evidence from Chinese documents and dateable artefacts of Chi­ nese origin fo und in the jars.

1 9 89 evoked tremendous excitement among archaeologists and the general pub­ lic. It was initially excavated in a rescue context ahead of industrial development, and an unprecedented extent o f it was examined. As a result, the whole picture of a central place o f Yayoi settlement was revealed, for the first time in the history of Japanese archaeology. The site was enclosed by a deep ditch and was occu­ pied throughout the Yayoi period. Evi­ dence of the production o f bronze and iron implements and of many storage facilities was discovered; activities characteristic o f central p l a c e s i n pre-urban settlement pat­ terns. However, the popular appeal of the site derived from the fact that some fea­ tures, such as a cluster of raised-floor buildings inferred to have been granarie s , and unique structures inferred to have been watchtowers at the corners of the enclosure ditches, conformed to the description o f the residence o f a high chief called Queen Himiko, who is described in the Chinese dynastic chronicle known as WeizhV compiled in the third century AD, as having extended her authority at that time over the western half of the Japanese archipelago.

We must assume that the references to the status of Queen Himiko and the nature

Figure 3 Stages in the forma tion of the compound cemetery a t Kuriyam a between approxima tely 1 20 BC and 30 BC, recon­ structed from the typo-chron ology of bur­ ial jars. (A] stage 1 , starting about 1 20 BC, (B) stage 2, (C) stage 3, en ding abo u t 30 BC.

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Figure 4 Th e compound cemetery at Yoshinogari un der excavation in 1 989. Th e largest burial pit (the supposed b urial place of the "king" of a regional unit) can be seen at the cen tre of the m o u n d.

of her authority reflect the Chinese origin of the chronicle. Long before the third cen­ tury A D , China had developed a sophisti­ cated system of bureaucratic government, and the emissaries who were sent by the Chinese emperor to bring his offerings to the queen, and the author-editor of the chronicle, would have interpreted what they saw and heard in terms of the state organization of the Wei dynasty. There­ fore, the status and authority of Queen Himiko should be carefully examined from archaeological and anthropological points of view rather than by reference only to the descriptions in the chronicle. This cannot be done in this short article, but such questions as whether she ruled as chief of an early state or chiefdom, or of a

confederacy of chiefdoms, need to be investigated.

A s already mentioned, the compound jar-burial cemetery of Yoshinogari was in use by about 200-100 BC, considerably earlier than the time of Queen Himiko. However, the conformity between the archaeological features o f the site and the description in the Weizhi chronicle has led to a situation in which the males who were buried at the cemetery can appar­ ently be described without hesitation as kings. Archaeologists are aware that the term " king" has anthropological as well as historical connotations, but they neverthe­ less allow it to be used to give visitors to the site (now designated the first national archaeological park in Japan) a readily

4 9

understood image o f the dead who were buried there. However, as already sug­ gested, archaeologists themselves have not managed to understand fully the nature and status of those who were buried at the cemetery. Thus, a misleading pic­ ture of the " cemetery of the kings" has come to be widely accepted by archae­ ologists without it being subjected to scholarly scrutiny.

Investigation and interpretation of the compound cemeteries Since 1 9 9 4 I have been studying mortuary practices and their social implications in the Yayoi period by reconstructing how the j ar-burial cemeteries of the northern Kyushu region were formed. I have stud­ ied several compound cemeteries, such as the one at Yoshinogari, by examining the typo-chronological position o f individual j ars. The study has revealed two shared characteristics that are particularly signifi­ cant: • Most of the compound cemeteries are

attached to the core sites of single flood­ plain-scale settlement systems.

• The people buried in the compound cemeteries were often interred with grave goods such as bronze daggers, whereas grave goods are extremely rare in ordinary cemeteries associated with more peripheral settlements. This suggests that those who were bur­

ied in the compound cemeteries were leaders of some sort. The fact that both the size of the pit o f the central grave (e.g. bur­ ial S ) 1 0 0 6 at Y oshinogari) and the grave goods deposited in it are usually the most impressive in a given cemetery might sug­ gest that the person buried at the centre was the chief of a regional community and that those buried in the peripheral posi­ tions were either subchiefs or members of the chief's family. I f they were family members, a stratifi e d social organization would be implied.

However, the following characteristics refute this interpretation: • Most of those buried in the compound

cemeteries were male. As already men­ tioned, eight out of fourteen burials at Y oshinogari have been shown to be of males, and two well preserved skeletons from the compound cemetery of Kuri­ yama (Fig. 1) are also male. From these, together with other examples, it can be inferred that almost all the dead from the compound cemeteries whose sex can b e determined are male.

• Because the compound cemeteries were in use over long periods of time (i.e. they were multi-phase cemeteries ) , they would each have to contain a succession o f chiefly burials if they were the mor­ tuary allotments of successive chiefs and subchiefs. However, the centres of the cemeteries were occupied by only one or two burials.

• Because without exception only one compound cemetery is attached to each

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Figure 5 Bronze daggers from the cemetery a t Yoshinogari. Th e longest dagger measures approxima tely 45 cm from end to end.

core settlement, it is unlikely that the successive chiefs o f a regional unit con­ structed a series of compound cemeter­ ies at the core settlement; and this and the previous point together suggest that those who were buried in the cemeteries are unlikely to have been the chief and the subchiefs or the chief and his family members.

• Finally, and most importantly, those who were buried in the compound cem­ eteries are likely to have been from dif­ ferent kin groups. This is suggested by the discovery that over 15 sequence types of mitochondrial (female-line) DNA are represented among the dead buried in the large linear cemetery and the compound cemetery of Kuma-Nish­ ioda (Fig. 1 ) . 1 The above points suggest that those who

were buried in the compound cemeteries were chosen from among several kin groups who constituted a single regional unit of social integration at the flood plain scal e . If that were the case, the compound cemeteries would have been monumental resting places for chosen individuals.

This interpretation leads to the question of by what criteria those male individuals were chosen. It is significant that the time when the compound cemeteries were form e d ( i . e . from the end of the Early Yayoi phase through the early Middle Yayoi, c. 200-100 BC) was the period that witnessed the establishment of single floodplain­ scale settlement systems and an increase o f intercommunal conflict. The former is evident in the emergence o f large core set­ tlements encircled by smaller satellite set­ tlements on the floodplains o f northern Kyushu, and the latter can be inferred fro m

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Figure 6 Plan of the cemetery at Yoshinogari showing the location of successive jar bur­ ials and the eigh t bronze daggers fo und in them (see Fig. 5). Th e dashed lines indicate the origin al area] extent and heigh t of the mound (see Fig. 4).

5 0

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a dramatic increase in the number o f skeletons that b e a r traces o f wounds - i n many c a s e s fata l - inflicted in combat.

Increasing population pressure follow­ ing the introduction o f systematic rice agriculture appears to have reached a threshold at the end of the Early Yayoi and the beginning of the early Middle Yayoi phases, when many small-scale settle­ ments were founded, in previously uncul­ tivated terrain, from the core settlements. This would have made difficult the main­ tenance o f intracommunal ties, particu­ larly between the core settlements and satellites newly split fro m them; and would also have raised intercommunal tension, particularly between settlements founded from different core settlements, over the ownership of land favourable for new paddy fields. At this time too, there is evidence for a development of the distri­ bution networks of tools, such as stone axes and stone sickles, needed for paddy­ field cultivation.

These developments are likely to have resulted in the emergence o f communal leaders who mediated intra- and intercom­ munal relations, including conflicts, by organizing communal gatherings, by nego­ tiating with the leaders o f other communal units, and by leading their community in combat. Such leaders would have needed outstanding physical and mental abilities.

This image of male leaders who, we infer, were buried in the compound cem­ eteries, resembles the anthropological concept of the "big man", a dominant figure , an impressive orator on intra- and intercommunal occasions, and physically strong enough to lead his people in combat. Big men in contemporary tribal societies achieve their social position by tirelessly mediating communal relations, negotiating over various types of ex­ change, and integrating communal mem­ bers. By doing so they embody the cohesion and unity of their community.

It is not unreasonable to compare the chosen males who were buried in the compound cemeteries of core settlements with big men who represented the com­ munal interests o f the regional commu­ nity. When community members gathered at a core settlement, they would have seen the mound in which their ancestral heroes were buried, and its monumental appear­ ance would have reminded them o f stories of the deeds of the ancestors and of the importance of communal unity.

Conclusion The above interpretation of the compound cemeteries suggests that there was very lit­ tle social stratification in the early Middle Yayoi phase and that it is inappropriate to refer to those who were buried there as " kings " : their status was achieved rather than ascribed or inherited, and their role was to represent communal interests. They emerged in response to new social and economic conditions, such as difficulty in

maintaining intracommunal ties and ris­ ing tension in intercommunal relations associated with population pressure. The appearance of rich jar burials and related phenomena in the archaeological record of the Middle Yayoi phase can b e interpreted as marking an episode in the transition from tribal social organization to the sys­ tem of chiefdoms that characterizes the succeeding Early Kofun phase of Japanese prehistory.

Notes 1. K. Shinoda & T. Kunisada, "Analysis o f

ancient Japanese society through mito­ chondrial DNA sequencing" , In ternational Journal of Osteoarcheology 4 , 291-7, 1994.

2 . This information was kindly provided by Yoshiyuki Tanaka o f Kyushu University, Fukuoka.

3. For further information on the contents o f the Weizhi chronicle, s e e p p . 2 1 8-21 in G. L . Barnes, China, Korea and Japan: the rise of civilization in East Asia (London: Thames & Hudson, 1 9 9 3 ) .

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