Jomon Pottery Display

Sannai Maruyama Site Museum
Aomori, Japan

In this series, the lower rows are older while the upper rows ("flamboyant") are later. The potter mannequin is female, in keeping with a scholarly tradition in the Far East¹. This is also the place to mention that the larger pots, while used for ordinary purposes (cooking, storage, etc.) in life, were sometimes repurposed for child burials.

¹Some scholars believe that women may have formed these hand-thrown pots; but there is really not much evidence either way, and pottery-making might well have been a family occupation (Women Potters: Transforming Traditions by Moira Vincentelli, Rutgers University Press, 2004).