Dolphin hunting/fishing of the Jomon period

During the last thirty years, there have been important findings in the whaling history of Japan or East Asia. First, in January 1972, a prehistoric engraving was found on a rock wall facing a dam near Ban-gu Dae in Kyongsan Namdo in southeast Korea, which shows various whales or whaling scenes. Second, in 1982 and 1983, numerous dolphin-bones of the Jomon-period were excavated from the Mawaki site in Ishikawa Prefecture. The Mawaki site excavation led me to a study of prehistoric whaling and to identify species of whale pictures on the rock engraving at Ban-gu dae. Therefore, I'd like to talk about Mawaki and then about the development from the dolphin hunting to the larger whale hunting through the find of Ban-gu Dae.

The Mawaki site is a wet site at the entrance of Toyama bay. A shell midden has not been found there despite shells in the boring cores of a 1998 survey. The shells were almost natural deposits from sea drifts. Numerous dolphin-bones also remained thanks to the wet-soil environment.

Before the excavation of the Mawaki site, good sites for dolphin bones were known, for example, the Asahi shell midden in Toyama Prefecture, the Natagiri cave in Chiba Prefecture and the Irie shell midden in Hokkaido. There is not however conclusive evidence for dolphin/porpoise hunting in the Jomon-period. The mere existence of many cetacean remains is generally not sufficient evidence for whaling, because whales sometimes get stranded on shore. However, dolphin hunting is quite possible by taking skillful advantage of animal behavior and geographical features. Special tools are not required since the driving method using boats, oars and, stones or poles to make sounds, can be effective if there are enough crew-members.

On the other hand, for several reasons the Mawaki is an ethno-archeological field very suited to studying dolphin hunting/fishing. 1) The dolphins amount to 90% of the minimum number of the animals here. 2) It is an exceptional feature of the Jomon assemblage in the Hokuriku Districts that stone spear points are one of the elements that compose the main stone tools from the Mawaki site. 3) Of the dolphin atlases from Stratum ⅩⅠ, 60% from Pacific White-sided Dolphins and 34 % from Common Dolphin . 4) A book on the natural history of Toyama, written in the early 18th century, describes a thrusting method with harpoons used for Pacific White-sided Dolphins because a netting method was unsuitable. 5) According to the compilation by the Japanese Fisheries Agency from 1886 to 1895, the structure of netting for Pacific White-sided Dolphin hunting is different from the Common Dolphin hunting at Tako in Izu Peninsula, because the former is agile and skillful in groups, making it difficult to hunt. 6) An illustration of Pre-modern fishing at Noto drawn in 1838 comments that it took two days to catch all of a thousand dolphins driven into an encircling net. 7) A picture postcard in the 1910s shows Common Dolphin hunting by the net-driving method at Ogi near Mawaki. 8) The open sea side of the Noto Peninsula is subject to frequent stranded whales, and the other side facing Toyama Bay, where the Mawaki site lies, is subject to the incidentally taken whales by stationary net fishery today. In the Pre-modern period, the supply of whales on the open seaside mainly depended on stranded or strayed whales, and whaling by stationary nets was flourishing on the bay side, too. We have no document and folklore of mass stranded dolphins on the Noto Peninsula.

This site yielded more than 286 dolphins from the layers of the later Early to Final Jomon-period. It is characteristic of dumps nearby a fishing ground and butchery in that the proportions of the main parts of skeletons are similar to the site as a whole. However, one area of concentrated bones lacks the main parts of one dolphin, from the cranium to the coccyx. Individual identification of many bones is necessary to reveal how each part of a dolphin skeleton is distributed in an excavated area. We investigated in detail the dolphin remains from Stratum ⅩⅠ, the later Early or early Middle Jomon-period, in an excavation grid of 6m by 15m with half-meter squares, with most dolphin remains at the site.

My first individual identification analysis was a pair matching of the humeri, which were excellently preserved parts of the pectoral-fin bones (humeri, radiuses and ulnas). These bones have very few cut marks ― only one (8%) in 132 humeri and none in the radiuses or ulnas. On the other hand, there were six (3.2%) cut marks in 190 scapulas. Moreover, there are many humeri articulated with radiuses or ulnas in the remains. It shows that the pectoral fins were cut off between the proximal ends of humeri and the distal ends of scapulas. Many humeri pairs should have bee found if the pectoral fins had not been taken and used, however, out of 56 left humeri and 60 right humeri, there was only one pair matching. Both the left and right humeri of the pair were found within a half meter square. Therefore, pectoral fins may have been useful and shared for some reason.

Many units of vertebrae of size easy to carry are found in an articulated state, about 50 to 70 cm in length. Three sets (9.4%) in 64 vertebral units were determined with high probability belong to those of the same individual. They were also found within a half or one meter square, too. It is remarkable that another example is of Bottlenose Dolphin size and consists of 15 vertebrae from the lumbar to the caudal, and is 71cm in length. An end of the unit, there are cut marks in the direction of the cranial-caudal line on the caudal base of left and right processus transversi. I regard the cut marks as incisions caused by dividing articulated vertebrae covered with strong ligaments into sections, though it is a hard task, for fishermen sharing a dolphin.

According to ¹³C and ¹⁵N analysis of human bone collagen, the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values increase in proportion with their dependence on ocean animals, especially marine mammals. The δ¹³C for three samples from the Jomon-period sites in the Hokuriku district are as follows: -17.0 per mill for the Mawaki Site, -17.3 per mill for the Akaura shell midden, and -18.5 per mill for the Kamiyamada shell midden. The most oceanic site of the three is the Mawaki site, producing numerous bones of dolphins at the entrance of Toyama bay. The second is the Akaura shell midden mainly with salt-water fish bones and shells on the inside of Nanao Bay. The Kamiyamada site is most influenced by land water. It is, therefore, a natural result that the values are arranged in the order of Mawaki, Akaura, and Kamiyamada. However, there is little difference between these values. The δ¹⁵N values for Mawaki and Kamiyamada are respectively +12.0 per mill and +8.2 per mill; the graph of the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N composition shows that Mawaki belongs to the oceanic group of the North-east to Central Honshu.

Nuts such as conker, walnut and chestnut, a causal factor in the lower value of δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N, were hardely excavated from the Mawaki site, though there were a number of chestnut tree remains and pollen fossils. Nut remains are probably also buried in the unexcavated earth at the site. Numerous fish bones, mainly mackerel, skipjack and sardine, were also excavated from the site. At the Mawaki site, artifacts from the Jomon-period to the Pre-modern period have been found. Many advantages of the food resources including a dolphin are important factors in the formation of a multistratified site.

An individual identification analysis of Pacific White-sided Dolphin atlases, crania and periotic bones shows that the most closely concentrated unit were 21 dolphins. These dolphins were mainly, however, associated with two types of pottery: the later Early and the latest Early Jomon. One unit of the concentration generally consisted of 7 dolphins or less. Although from the findings it is difficult to give an absolute figure, I estimate that there were between several to several tens of dolphins in a catch. It is conceivable that sometimes dolphins were cut up when the catch was shared amongst the participants or neighboring settlements. Reciprically sharing the dolphins would be advantages to nearby settlements. The dried or smoked meat is traded over a wide area. A custom of sharing makes a network for mutual aid, so to speak, social insurance between settlements or regions.

Dolphin Hunting/Fishing of the Jomon Period

Dolphin　Hunting/Fishing　of the Jomon Period