Harpoon Heads from the Moyoro Shell Mound

• Main Authors: 高橋, 健, 60711
• Language: Japanese
• Published: 東京大学考古学研究室 2003
• Subjects: 202.5; Okhotsk; okhotsk sea
• Online Access: https://repository.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/record/27643/files/KJ00004249456.pdf

application/pdf This paper discusses the harpoon heads excavated from the Moyoro Shell Mound, a famous archaeological site of the Okhotsk culture in Abashiri City, Hokkaido Prefecture. The site is located on the left bank of the Abashiri River, which flows into the Okhotsk Sea (Fig. 1). Archaeological finds from the Moyoro Shell Mound, which were excavated from the Pit-dwelling No.10 in 1948 (Komai ed. 1964), are preserved by the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Letters, the University of Tokyo. In this paper, harpoon heads made of bone and antlers in this collection will be described and discussed. In addition, some harpoon heads in the collection of the Hakodate City Museum will also be discussed; these specimens were unearthed from the Moyoro Shell Mound in 1941 and 1942. From the Pit-dwelling No.10, 23 harpoon heads were excavated (Fig. 2-5, PL. 1-4). They are classified by the way they are hafted and connected to the line. While only one male harpoon head was found from the floor of the dwelling, 22 female harpoon heads were unearthed from the floor and upper layers, including five unfinished specimens. The female-toggle harpoon heads are subdivided into four types. Type I is an open socket harpoon head, with a line groove also used for lashing the shaft or the foreshaft. Type II is an open socket harpoon head with two line holes to hold the harpoon head and a groove for lashing the shaft or the foreshaft. Type III is a closed socket harpoon head with a thin body. Type IV is an open socket harpoon head with two line holes, which belongs to the Ainu period. The number of harpoon heads of each type found from each layer is shown in Table 2. Type I harpoon heads constitute a large proportion of the unearthed harpoon heads, while only one specimen for each of Type II, Type III, and Type IV was found from the topsoil. Some of the Type I harpoon heads show the traces of reprocessing (Fig. 6). The reduction process of this type of harpoon heads was reconstructed based on these materials (Fig. 7). The Type ...