The Nature of Large-Scale Yayoi Settlements: An Analysis Based on Middle Yayoi Sites of the Osaka Plain

Abstract

Abstract
A variety of labels such as "base settlement, " "fortress settlement, " and "city" have been applied to largescale settlements of the Middle and Late Yayoi periods. In particular, the notion of a Yayoi city, stemming from the results of the investigation of the Ikegami-Sone site in Osaka, has been gaining attention. This paper attempts a new assessment of the complicated picture of Yayoi settlement sites, based on an analysis of the actual conditions of large-scale settlements.
The central Osaka plain was selected as the region for conducting this analysis, and for three areas in which Yayoi settlement sites were maintained continuously over the Middle Yayoi (the groups of sites on the southern coast of Lake Kawachi, on the eastern coast of that lake, and near the Hirano and Nagase rivers), an examination was conducted of changes in the horizontal distributions of the settlement and cemetery districts for each time period. As a result, for locations which have come to be called large-scale or base settlements it was found that a unit of structure, consisting of a cluster of square-shaped moated burial precincts attached to a settlement district about 100 to 200 m diameter, existed repeatedly and in adjacent fashion, while locations which have been called small-scale settlements are instances where this structure is but thinly distributed.
The settlement district is estimated to be on the scale of twenty to fifty pit dwellings, representing a group several times the settlement unit envisioned in previous debate. This is labeled the "fundamental group" in the current study. As this group is inferred to produce the cluster of moated burial precincts, each of which may contain several burials including those of infants and thereby shows the character of a family grave, the group itself is thought to have been based on consanguineous relations as its unifying principle. It is also held to be the unit for the construction of paddy districts. The author assesses this as the social group which performed vital functions regarding the location of settlement and the resolution of conflict.
According to this notion of a fundamental group, large-scale settlements are regarded as compounds made up of several of these units, and clusters of large ditches found on the plains in the Kinki region are not seen as moats encircling entire settlements. It is also thought that relations between neighboring fundamental groups within large-scale settlements became increasingly complex, resulting in the trend towards inequality visible within and between moated burial precincts. Further, based on the analysis already conducted for the Ikegami-Sone site, a certain tendency toward functional differentiation between neighboring groups can be surmised, and the fostering of mutual dependence between fundamental groups within and between largescale settlements has drawn attention. Similar characteristics have moreover been recognized for large-scale settlements in other parts of western Japan.
Given the above characteristics, it is difficult to define large-scaled settlements as fortress settlements consisting of self-sufficient agricultural communities having a low degree of economic dependence on the outside world. Also, as the fundamental group is consanguineous in nature, to define large-scale settlements as cities it becomes necessary to envision them as inherently based on a contradictory principle of residence. From these observations, the author proposes to interpret large-scale settlements of the Yayoi period as neither agricultural villages nor cities, but rather by using the notion of "compound-type settlement, " through which the process of increase in social complexity may be considered.