EA-YAMAGUCHIDAI-HERA-001 - archaeological find
Yamaguchidai site large hera-shaped pendant
Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan; Yamaguchidai site - East Asia
Function not recorded Candidate only
ヘラ状垂飾 Japanese
Source term: ヘラ状垂飾; hera-shaped pendant; spatula-shaped pendant
ヘラ状垂飾 (hera-jō suishoku): 'spatula-shaped pendant'
Read the wear and the blade gives itself up. Around the hole of this hand-length slat of imported serpentinite, the cord-groove bites at a stubborn forty-five degrees across both faces — not the straight overhead rub a dangling pendant leaves, but the mark of something held taut and pressed to the body, day after day. Excavators lifted it from a pit at Yamaguchidai in Kawasaki, one of five such large Jōmon ornaments, and read it not as a whirled voice on a cord but as a personal emblem: precious foreign stone worn at the hip to mark who you were.
- Object
- ヘラ状垂飾; hera-shaped pendant; spatula-shaped pendant. Specimens/count: one of five large serpentinite examples in Kanto/Gunma cluster. Material: serpentinite. Dimensions: over 10 cm class; exact dimensions need original report. Perforation: upper perforation; near-45-degree oblique wear on both faces around perforation. Context: from pit according to Kanagawa 2025 summary of the five-object group. Date: late Early to initial Middle Jōmon, ~6000–5000 cal BP (cluster attribution).
- Function
- Published as a hera-shaped pendant / waist ornament from a pit; the atlas ranks it the cluster's best-formed candidate for the whirled-blade reading.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Approximate locality or municipality/site-cluster anchor from the local dossier; refine before public release.
- Source location
- Kanagawa 2024 lecture PDF Fig. 2 cluster summary