Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan: Comparative and Contextual Perspectives

Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan brings together specialists of the European Bronze and Iron Age and the Japanese Yayoi and Kofun periods for the first time to discuss burial mounds in a comparative context. The book aims to strengthen knowledge of Japanese archaeology in Europe and vice versa. The papers demonstrate many methodological and interpretive commonalities in the archaeology of burial mounds in Japan and Europe and provide a series of state-of-the-art case studies highlighting many different aspects of burial mound research in both regions. Topics addressed by both European and Japanese specialists include research histories, excavation methods, origins and development of graves with burial mounds, the relationship of burial mounds to settlements and landscape, and above all administrative power and ritual.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan: An Introduction – by Werner Steinhaus and Thomas Knopf

Hallstatt Burial Mounds Then and Now: Excavations and Changing Images in the History of Research – by Nils Müller-Scheeßel

Excavating the Mounded Tombs of the Kofun Period of the Japanese Archipelago: A History of Research and Methods – by Tatsuo NAKAKUBO

Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Northern and Central Europe: Their Origins and the Development of Diversity in Time and Space – by Frank Nikulka

Emergence and Development of Burial Mounds in the Yayoi Period – by Hisashi NOJIMA

Princes, Chiefs or Big Men? Burial Mounds as Reflections of Social Structure in the Hallstatt Period – by Wolfram Schier

Social Stratification and the Formation of Mounded Tombs in the Kofun Period of Protohistoric Japan – by Ken’ichi SASAKI

Burial Mound/Landscape-Relations. Approaches Put forward by European Prehistoric Archaeology – by Ariane Ballmer

Mounded Tomb Building during the Kofun Period: Location and Landscape – by Akira SEIKE

Burial Mounds and Settlements. Their Relations in the Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène-Period (6th–4th century BC) – by Ines Balzer

The Relationship between Mounded Tombs, Settlements, and Residences in the Kofun Period: Reflecting Social Changes? – by Takehiko MATSUGI

Aspects of Early Iron in Central Europe – by Manfred K. H. Eggert

Iron and its Relation to Mounded Tombs on the Japanese Islands – by Hisashi NOJIMA

The Development of Metalworking and the Formation of Political Power in the Japanese Archipelago – by Takehiko MATSUGI

Monuments for the Living and the Dead: Early Celtic Burial Mounds and Central Places of the Heuneburg Region – by Dirk Krausse and Leif Hansen

Mounded Tombs of the Kofun Period: Monuments of Administration and Expressions of Power Relationships – by Shin’ya FUKUNAGA

Burial Mounds in Broader Perspective. Visibility, Ritual and Power – by Chris Scarre

An Introduction to the Yukinoyama Mounded Tomb – by Naoya UEDA

The Significance of the Nonaka Mounded Tomb – by Joseph Ryan