ABSTRACT
The early appearance of pottery in the Japanese archipelago can be understood as a process of technological innovation involving accumulative changes in small-scale practices, each of which potentially had social meaning. Pottery production took several thousand years to become embodied, or normalized, in the routinized activity of foraging communities of the prehistoric Japanese archipelago. The environmental conditions during the Incipient Jomon changed considerably across the Japanese archipelago. In line with many Japanese archaeologists, he notes an apparent shift in mobility strategies towards the end of the Pleistocene, with a shift from circulating high mobility to radiating mobility with fixed stations to call at regularly. Kobayashi Tatsuo, on the other hand, in reflecting on the origins of pottery in the Japanese archipelago is explicit about the specific implications and significance of pottery in terms of the subsequent development of Jomon culture.
