Life at Sannai-Maruyama

Making a lasting home

At Sannai-Maruyama, food-storage pits survive alongside homes. Fish from the sea and chestnuts and walnuts from woodland provided resources in different seasons. Keeping some food for later linked gathering with storage and cooking. The settlement occupied around 3900–2200 BCE depended on those recurring tasks as well as hunting.

Pottery also enabled boiling. Gathering, keeping and preparing food were linked tasks, documented by nuts, fish remains, vessels and storage pits. Residents did more than wait for nature: managing chestnut woodland altered the surroundings that sustained their homes.

Pit buildings had sunken floors and central hearths. Maintaining homes and storage pits was part of settlement life. Narrow-mouthed storage pits at the edges connect obtaining food with keeping it for later use.

Clay-extraction pits and layered deposits of earth, ash and broken pottery preserve acquisition and disposal. The settlement included places for obtaining raw materials and managing waste, not only completed objects and houses.

Turning materials into tools

Obsidian fractured into sharp edges for cutting tools and arrowheads; hard jade required different expertise to shape and drill. Raw and unfinished material alongside finished ornaments indicates work within the settlement. Exchange therefore supplied materials for local production rather than only ready-made possessions.

Lacquered wooden vessels and a woven bark bag preserve another range of skills. Wood, bark and lacquer demanded preparation different from stone. Waterlogged deposits saved objects that usually decay, revealing containers, carriers and ornaments with distinct materials and functions.

Homes, roads and remembrance

Large buildings required timber selection, transport and excavation. Surviving chestnut posts establish substantial construction even where a building’s precise purpose is uncertain. Structures beyond ordinary houses suggest spaces for activity involving more than individual households.

Separating homes, stores and disposal areas helped sustain repeated use of the land. Over roughly seventeen centuries the settlement changed, so all its features were not contemporary. Its significance lies in the combined work of provisioning, manufacture, maintenance and burial that supported settled life.

Before and after

1. c. 3900 BCE

   Long-term occupation begins.

2. c. 2200 BCE

   Approximate end of the settlement occupation.

3. 1992

   Excavations uncover the large settlement.

Key terms

Storage pit

A pit interpreted as a place for storing food or supplies.

Obsidian

Volcanic glass whose origin can trace movement.

Reconstruction

An interpretation of a lost structure based on surviving traces.

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