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Neolithic
Japanese Ceramics
Magnificently expressive
"flame-style" pots were made by a hunter-gatherer
society during the middle Jomon (rope-pattern) period in the
inland, forested areas of Niigata Prefecture, near the Japan
Sea, and in neighboring Nagano Prefecture. From about 3000 to
2000 b.c., the
weather was warmer in this region; now it is called snow
country. Food was plentiful; although this society depended on
deer, boar, shellfish, and mostly uncultivated plants for
survival, supplies were reliable and people did not have to
migrate to find food. Consequently, the society had the
stability to create large, ornately decorated vessels. Rarely
did the circumstances of a hunter-gatherer society allow its
artists the luxury of expressing the unrestrained creativity
seen in the works of the middle Jomon potters.
The vessels were coil-built, and
leather-hard strings of clay were applied as ornamentation. The
vessels were then baked in a bonfire at a temperature not
exceeding 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. Although they appear
nonfunctional because of their great protuberances, these
ceramics were in fact used for cooking, perhaps of a ritual
nature. Both before and after the middle Jomon period, vessels
exhibited a more utilitarian design.
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