Great chestnut-post building of Sannai-Maruyama
Edificio de grandes postes de castaño de Sannai-Maruyama
- Date
- c. 3000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Sannai-Maruyama, Aomori, Japan
- Credited to
- Jōmon culture
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Six pits about 2 m deep held chestnut posts roughly 1 m across, spaced 4.2 m apart, supporting a monumental structure in a Jōmon village. It is one of the largest earthfast-post timber works of prehistoric East Asia.
The site was occupied from c. 3900 to 2200 BC. The pits date to the Middle Jōmon; height and function (tower, ritual building, calendar) are hypotheses and the 15 m reconstruction is interpretive.
What it led to
- Japanese tradition of monumental earthfast posts in ritual buildings
- choice of chestnut, a moisture-resistant timber, for post foundations
- evidence of large communal works in a sedentary hunter-gatherer society