The Bullroarer Atlas

No. EA-KAWAJIRI-001

Kawajiri broken axes reground and pierced

Japan · Okajima, Esashi Town (Okhotsk Subprefecture), Hokkaido; Kawajiri site, now Horobetsu Right-Bank Terrace site · East Asia

Function not recorded Candidate only

Archaeological datec. 6100–4000 BCUncalibrated horizon from the pottery found with them; the objects are not directly dated.
The four Kawajiri pieces: the largest and heaviest below, three broken fragments above it, two of them reground after breaking.
Plate I. The four Kawajiri pieces: the largest and heaviest below, three broken fragments above it, two of them reground after breaking. Image source
Archaeological drawing of five pierced stone axes: no. 1 is an unknown-findspot comparison piece and nos. 2–5 are the Kawajiri finds, shown in multiple views and cross-sections.
Plate II. No. 1, a comparison piece of unknown findspot from the old Utanobori town collection; nos. 2–5, the four Kawajiri objects. Image source
Comparison pieces nos. 6–16 from other sites, all in Hokkaido except no. 13, from Aomori.
Plate III. Comparison pieces nos. 6–16 from other sites, all in Hokkaido except no. 13, from Aomori. Image source
A plate of numbered pierced stone axes, nos. 17–35, shown in face and side views; a five-centimetre scale runs along the bottom.
Plate IV. Comparison pieces nos. 17–35, smallest last — a class of about forty across the north. Image source

有孔石斧

Source term: yūkō sekifu (perforated stone axe)

有孔石斧 (yūkō sekifu): 'perforated stone axe' — northern Japan's report-language for end-pierced re-worked axe blades.

From one trench at the Okajima Kawajiri site on Hokkaido's Okhotsk coast came four perforated stone blades of the Initial Jomon. The largest is a 12.3-centimetre strip of dark stone with a red heart, biconically drilled near one end, the drill's rotary striations still legible in the hole — and at 228 grams, its base never even shaped, it would be a poor thing to whirl. But two of its companions were broken axes deliberately ground smooth again before being pierced, part of a northern class now numbering about forty, which archaeologists read as ornaments or worn-out tools re-hung at the waist. The open question belongs to the thinner survivors: when a broken polished axe became a light blade on a cord, did it ever become an instrument?

Particulars

Object
Four perforated and reworked polished-stone axe objects from one trench. The largest, no. 2, is a strip-shaped (短冊状) slat, (12.3) × (5.0) × (2.7) cm and 228.4 g, biconically drilled with clear rotary striations, a saw-cut (擦切) groove, warped axis and unformed base — possibly unfinished. Nos. 3–5 are basal fragments of 55.0, 68.4 and 110.2 g; nos. 3–4 carry grinding on their fracture faces — broken axes deliberately reworked after breakage. Red argillaceous chert per the 1964 report, though Tatsuta notes the pieces look serpentinite-like and may be rodingite or tremolite rock. Same trench: Higashi-Kushiro I–IV pottery, ten stone-blade arrowheads, 120 net sinkers. Date: Initial Jomon, middle phase; serpentinite-axe phases III–IV, roughly 8,100–6,000 years ago (an uncalibrated class/site horizon).
Function
Published as perforated stone axes: broken polished axes deliberately reground and pierced for suspension, read as portable tools or stone stock carried on a cord — the site report imagined them slung from the waist. Whether the thinner pieces also sounded on that cord is the open question.

Source

Tatsuta Osamu (立田理), 「有孔石斧について（枝幸町岡島川尻遺跡（現・ホロベツ右岸段丘遺跡）出土の有孔石斧からの考察）」, Esashi Kenkyu 枝幸研究 (Bulletin of the Okhotsk Museum Esashi) 11 (2020): 25-32, Table 1, nos. 2-5, fig. 1 nos. 2-5 and photo 2; Okhotsk Museum Esashi, Niioka collection

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Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.