Many Jomon figurines are excavated as small fragments which are seldom reassembled into their original form. In order to argue that this is the result of unusual breakage, we need to compare figurines with the excavational contexts of other artifacts from the same period. As the first step of this study, I attempted a quantitative comparison of figurine fragments, developing a breakage rate wherein a complete figurine was assigned a value of 1. Figurines were compared by type, size, form and decoration. As a sample, I used a corpus of 1035 Final Jomon figurines from Iwate Prefecture.
In a comparison of breakage rates for each figurine type, similar averages were found for each type with more than 15 examples except for X-shaped and small undecorated figurines (Table 1). This average was about 0.2, the size of a figurine head. However, although the averages and maxima of most types were 0.2 or less, almost all also had intact examples (Table 3).
Paying attention to differences in the averages, it can be seen that values are generally smaller for large figurines and higher for smaller ones. Similarly, hollow figurines tend to have smaller averages than slab types. X-shaped and small undecorated figurines are larger in both averages and maximum values. Breakage rates for small, non-hollow and slab figurines are more variable than those of large and hollow types. Looking at the breakage rates for large "snow goggle" figurines and descendant types, it was not possible to see any regular changes over time (Table 2).
I conclude that most differences in breakage rates depend on the method of manufacture of the figurine, ie., its size, form and whether or not it is hollow. Further computer simulation should be able to confirm the results presented here.
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