Yoshimine hera-shaped pendant

箆状垂飾

Source term: 箆状垂飾; hera-shaped pendant; spatula-shaped pendant

箆状垂飾 (hera-jō suishoku): 'spatula-shaped pendant'

The Yoshimine terrace above the Jōganji River was being cut away for soil when Toyama archaeologists pushed through a rescue excavation in 1973–74; among the Early Jōmon houses and pits they salvaged was what the prefecture's own newsletter calls a 'rare hera-shaped pendant' — a spatula of polished stone twelve centimetres long and three wide, pierced once through the end. The official object page says almost nothing else: no material, no thickness, no wear notes, just the classification 'pendant.' The hera class it belongs to is scattered thinly across Early Jōmon Japan and has attracted a century of guesses — hairpin, waist ornament, insignia — none of which sits comfortably on a hand-length polished blade. At twelve centimetres Yoshimine's is among the largest, well into the size range of working bullroarers.

出土品の中には、珍しい箆状垂飾もあります。

Among the excavated finds is also a rare hera-shaped pendant.

Maibun Toyama, vol. 158 (2022), on the Yoshimine site

Particulars

Object

A spatula-shaped (hera) pendant of polished stone, 12.0 cm long and 3.0 cm at its widest, pierced once at the end.

Function

Published as a rare hera-shaped (spatula) pendant from the 1973–74 rescue excavation; the pendant label is classificatory rather than argued, and the large end-holed form is that of a whirled blade.