FIGURES AND FIGURE CAPTIONS
Fig. 1
THE BASKET AND ITS MANY RELATIVES The term 'basket' is used in an exemplary way and represents a wide field of object culture, the 'soft industries'. In ethnology, the basket technically and formally has a large number of relatives. But these must have escaped the archaeologistŐs method. The present image wants to remind us that prehistoric cultures were much better equipped than we nowadays, influenced by the archaeologistŐs view, might assume.
Fig. 2
TERRITORIAL CULT SIGNS IN JAPAN Plate showing the most important types of forms as studied in l00 Japanese villages. The order of the depicted signs follows priorities set out in a former study (Egenter 1982). The two principal variants of the hypothetical original form - hut and pillar - are shown in the insets. They are drawn from experimental signs (different scales!)
Fig. 3
SYSTEM OF TERRITORIAL REPRESENTATION USING SOFT SIGNS IN A MEDIEVAL JAPANESE TOWN Neighbouring villages (partly resettled when the town was founded) annually document their political relations by taking their traditional sacred symbols from the village to the central medieval institution, the Hachiman Shrine in the town. The three lower lines represent territorial organizations at a village level, the uppermost line shows the order of the villages and their symbols in front of the central shrine on the occasion of the annual festival.
Fig. 4
'STRUCTURAL' APPROACH TO A SURVEY OF JAPANESE VILLAGES The territorially representative significance of cult markers and their perishable characteristics imply specific relations with regard to social, ritual, and spatial structures of the settlement. The complex clearly shows its systematic character. The 'sacred seat of the god' in the centre (S) is the categorial model of polar structures Ra, Ri, and So. 'Structure' in the anthropological (abstract) sense is closely related to 'structura' in the constructive sense. The whole represents a sacral territorial law. Its perishable documents are cyclically renewed as a technologically primitive object tradition by local elites. The system is generated at the occasion of the foundation of a settlement. In Japan this leads us archaeologically back to agrarian prehistory, historically into early history and its "myths". In short, structural history of this sort connects us with the entirety of JapanŐs cultural past.
- SYN...............Synchronic survey
- S.....................Sign, Symbol, 'structura'
- Sae/sp.org.....aesthetic structures and spatial organization of a village
- Srit.................. ritual structures of the festival of the village deity
- Ssoc. ..............social structure manifesting itself at the festival of the village deity
- DIA...................Diachronic interpretation
- t.........................time
- Rn.....................renewal 'n' by founder of the village or representant of the founding line
- R1....................first renewal of sign by founder of the village
- F.......................foundation of village, establishing territorial rights by setting up S by founder(s) of the village
Fig. 5
TEMPORARY CULT SIGNS (YORISHIRO) OF TRADITIONAL JAPANESE SHINTO The drawings are mostly taken from illustrations in Japanese literature and were, as far as this was possible, drawn to scale. The rest (no.13O) is taken from the author's own research records. At a rough estimate, based on nonillustrated cults mentioned in literature, these plates reflect around lO% of the rites still performed in Japan today. The dissemination and significance of these rites point to JapanŐs agrarian pre- and early history.
Fig. 6
SOFT INDUSTRIES AS PROTOTYPES OF THE EARLIEST CHINESE CHARACTERS - a..... The earliest Chinese characters known to man are carved on animal bones (after Unger 1969: 17). They are very similar to the stroke-signs of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean regions. Here too there exists an extremely important character (she, Sino-Japanese "sha", meaning "society"), which has been studied historically and, in its earliest form, connected with structures made of reeds (Moriya 195O).
- b.....Chinese characters of the Shang period, carved on bone (about 15OO - 100O B.C.; after Shod™ Zenshž 1954).
- c.....Main part of the Chinese sign 'she' in its earliest stage as a carved sign. The Japanese sinologist Moriya relates it to reed construction (Moriya 1950).
- d.....Reed column which is erected at the cultfestival of the agrarian deity in Mil-Tan (South Korea). The author owes this very precious photograph to Hiroshi Nagai, a photographer well known in Japan for his ethnographical documentations (Ainu). The image shows clearly that fibroconstructive traditions of this type still exist in Korea - maybe similarly widespread like in Japan. They might just not heave been documented yet.
Fig. 7
DIFFUSION PATTERN AFTER K.J. NARR ('Narr's Diagonals') Karl NarrŐs schema is of great importance. It shows the "cultural lag", particularly of northern Europe: when Mesopotamia and Egypt had highly complex urban cultures complete with script, northernmost Europe still showed strong Mesolithic features (hunters and gatherers)! With respect to certain conservative structural traits or particular objects one might still search for this "cultural lag" today.
- PH-H............approximative borderline between prehistory and history
- -->................difference in cultural level and direction of acculturation
- I ..................first appearance of iron
- B ................first appearance of bronze
- Co ..............first appearance of copper
- Ce ...............first appearance of pottery
- U ..................urban cultures
- A .................agrarian village cultures
- G ...................hunting and gathering cultures
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