Photo/Illutration Jomon Period stone tools excavated from the Kasori Shell Mounds are on display at the Kasori Shell Mounds Museum. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

I had heard of shell mounds, but frankly, my reaction to them had been “ho-hum,” as really, what’s the point of seeing a pile or layers of old shells?

However, as fate would have it, I found myself in Wakaba Ward in Chiba Prefecture, minutes from the Kasori Shell Mounds Museum at the special historical site. So I thought, why not?

I learned it is Japan’s biggest shell mound site and dates back a mind-boggling 5,000 years. And that on this spot stood a 130-meter, donut-shaped shell mound. I have to admit I was impressed and intrigued.

Shell mounds, sometimes called middens, often consist of more than a bunch of clams. At Kasori, there are lots of bladder moon snails (tsumetagai), short-neck clams (asari), orient clams (hamaguri) and duck clams (shiofuki). Included in middens are bones of fish and animals, nuts, tools and artifacts.

At first glance, and according to Wikipedia, a midden is just a big pile of trash to which prehistoric people kept adding debris. But upon close inspection, it could be argued that is not always the case, as human skeletons have been discovered arranged next to dogs or the cranial bones of deer in an apparently ritualistic way.

The Jomon Pottery Culture Period (c. 14,500 B.C.-1,000 B.C.) was coined as a translation of “cord-marked,” first used by Edward Morse, who in 1877 conducted one of the earliest excavations of shell mounds in Japan. Middens are usually part of a settlement, interestingly always written in katakana as "mura."

At Kasori, we can see artsy clay figures and gorgeous pottery of the Jomon, along with tools used for nut cracking, cutting, shaving and polishing. Life-sized mannequins wearing traditional garb and adorned with earrings, necklaces, bracelets and hair ornaments give us glimpses into things that must have been important to them.

Jade from faraway places such as Itoigawa, Niigata Prefecture, has been unearthed, strongly suggesting trade between the Jomon peoples in different parts of Japan.

I recently took a DNA genealogy test and got back ethnicity estimate results. I was surprised to see that 16 percent of my genes hail from Scotland, 12 percent from Germanic Europe and, among others, 2 percent from Korea!

I am reminded that all of us exist because of our ancestors. People from antiquity have lived, laughed, cried, created, believed and passed the baton of life and culture on to the next generation. My visit put things in a broad perspective, and I get it now--it is not just ho-hum.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Nov. 1 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s In and Around Tokyo," which depicts the capital and its surroundings through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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