抄録
Though in recent years discoveries have increasingly been made of ditch and embankment-shaped structures in the ruined villages of the Yayoi Age, yet at present all-out excavation and investigation are little advanced owing to the special nature of the work, and there still are left lots of intrinsic matters unrevealed.
The writer, at first, having closely examined the structures of the sites in the light of every material obtained from every part of the country, developing his studies based on the correlation between their diachronic transitions and their localities to reach at some conclusions, stated in this report his prospective plans and opinions to carry out the future researches, pointing out where to find new problems to solve. At present situation, however, with scanty materials, some of them not beyond the range of working hypothesis, further inguiries and researches should be pursued so fulfil the completion of studies in that line. It is hereby concluded as follows by summarizing the characteristic features of the ruined structures of embankments and ditches in those periods with settlement enclosed within:
1. Those ruined structures in the Yayoi Age ditch and embankment show that in those villages and hamlets on a developed stage of agriculture they served as boundary for a large group of families inclosed within it, and at the same time they intended to function as an attribute to defend the group against outside enemies. Their locations, scales, forms, functions to be put into effect and all the other points in their respective localities are considered to differ from one to another depending on the situation of the age, the traditional trait of the community together with the political and militaristic requisites and the topographical aspects of locality, all of these individual conditions inter-relating and reacting each other.
2. It is most probable the those enclosed settlements of the Yayoi Age did not spontaneously come into being on the Japanese Islands, but they were brought by immigrants from more civilized agricultural regions beyond the seas. Thus, we find every indication that such a type of village and hamlet can be traced back to those now found in the China proper and that passing through the Northern Korea it was first introduced into the northern part of Kyushu, then spreading all over the country. Hence a shape is assumed to be an Asian agricultural community of the ancient times.
