Lifeways/ Conclusion

Lifeways 

This is a replica of a Jomon canoe. Source

Lifeways; this includes anything that has to do with the way Jomon people lived their lives. You may be asking yourself, 'how do lifeways connect to shell mounds and complexity?' Well, turns out that a lot of activities that were carried out by the Jomon tied back to shell mounds, such as sea faring and shellfish collection, which can imply a complex system of subsistence and ecological exploitation.

"Skeletal remains from shell middens provided early physical anthropologists with invaluable information to investigate the population history and lifeways of prehistoric people on the Japanese islands" (Habu 19). Something we have not talked about in this blog is the importance of human remains also found in these mounds. Yes, the Jomon and most societies linked with shell mounds also used the shell mounds as a burial place. This practice itself is part of the Jomon lifeway.

So Why did the Jomon not Adopt Agriculture?

As I have demonstrated through the focus on shell mounds, the Jomon simply lived in a rich environment that never required them to focus on agriculture:

"Agriculture did not develop in Japan because no Japanese species were able to so command the attention of Jomon communities that they stopped fishing, hunting, and harvesting other resources available to them. Given its wonderful archeological record, Jomon Japan is a good place to observe how hunter-gatherers could engineer ecosystems" (Matsui 367).   

In short, no important species involved in the Jomon subsistence/diet ever went extinct or they simply had so many choices they could not have possibly driven a single species into extinction. Many times around the world we see cases of societies running species into extinction, forcing them to focus on other resources. Perhaps the Jomon were good about taking care of their environment. It should be clear that the Jomon were clearly a complex society and that the absence of agriculture did not seem to have affected their evolution. 

I hope you have a bit about Jomon shell mounds, subsistence, material culture and the lifeways of the Jomon. Thank you for reading my blog.

Habu, Junko., Akira, Matsui., Yamamoto, Naoto., Kanno, Tomonori. Shell midden archaeology in Japan: Aquatic food acquisition and long-term change in the Jomon culture. Quaternary International 2011 Vol. 239 p19-27.