EA-HEIWA-HOKKAIDO-001 - archaeological find
Heiwa site stone-axe-shaped pendant
Urahoro, Hokkaido, Japan; Heiwa aggregate route - East Asia
Function not recorded Candidate only
石斧型垂飾 Japanese
Source term: 石斧型垂飾; 短冊形の垂飾; 軟玉製装飾品; 有孔石斧
石斧型垂飾 (sekifu-gata suishoku): 'stone-axe-shaped pendant'
Urahoro's Heiwa site contributes a whole small corpus to the perforated-slat question: the modern comparative table lists a thick ten-centimetre fragment with a sawn-through hole, slats of 6.8, 6.0 and 4.5 centimetres, some with unfinished drilling — mostly logged as rhyolite, one flagged as possibly Hidaka jade, all under the perforated stone axe label. It was one of these that reached the newspapers in 2000 as a 'soft jade' ornament, before geologists pointed out how often Hokkaido's look-alike greenstones fool the eye. The corpus matters to the atlas as a population: one site, one horizon, repeated thin end-holed blades in graded sizes — the pattern a local tradition of suspended slat objects would leave, whatever those objects did.
- Object
- 石斧型垂飾; 短冊形の垂飾; 軟玉製装飾品; 有孔石斧. Specimens/count: one newspaper-illustrated top-holed slat plus multiple Heiwa perforated-axe/slat fragments in Esashi comparative table. Material: mostly rhyolite in Esashi table; one row marked possible Hidaka jade; newspaper reports Hidaka nephrite/soft jade with geology caution. Dimensions: Esashi table Heiwa rows include (10.0) x (4.2) x (2.2) cm fragment with rubbed-cut hole; 6.8 x 2.4 x 0.9 cm; 6.0 x 1.8 x 0.6 cm possible Hidaka jade; 4.5 x 1.4 x 0.3 cm. Perforation: newspaper image shows small upper hole; Esashi table row 16 has rubbed-cut hole, rows 26/28/29/34/35 have rubbed-cut traces or unfinished perforation evidence. Context: Heiwa site; Esashi table attributes rows to Urahoro town education reports 1960 and 1971 and Shimokorobe-type Early Jomon context. Date: Initial Jōmon (早期), shell-impressed-pottery horizon; the perforated-axe class bracket is 8100–7100 14C BP (~9000–7900 cal BP) in the Esashi 2020 chronology.
- Function
- A multi-piece perforated-axe corpus from one Initial Jōmon site, with contested 'Hidaka jade' claims attached to its thinnest slat; the atlas tracks the set as a graded population of end-holed blades.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Approximate locality or municipality/site-cluster anchor from the local dossier; refine before public release.
- Source location
- Hokkaido curators article and Urahoro/Esashi bibliography route