The Wisdom of Not Discarding: A Shell Mound Was Not a Garbage Dump

Along the seashore or by a riverbank, there are patches of ground that swell up white. Dig into them, and an immense number of shells appear, layered one upon another. These are ‘shell mounds.’ For a long time, shell mounds were explained as ‘garbage dumps,’ places where the Jomon people threw away the shells of the shellfish they had finished eating. Yet as excavation advanced, that understanding was gradually rewritten. From within the heaps of shells came carefully arranged animal bones, burials of people and dogs, and even ornaments. For a place said to be where things were discarded, there were far too many traces of prayer. The very core of Jomon’s recycling society lies quietly asleep within these white hills.

What Is a Shell Mound Made Of?

When you hear ‘shell mound,’ you may picture a hill of nothing but shells. In reality, however, a shell mound is a far more miscellaneous and far richer deposit. Among the shells are mixed the bones of deer and wild boar, fish and birds, fragments of broken pottery, worn-down stone tools, and tools that had become unusable. Things the Jomon people let go of in the course of their lives, layered over long years — that is the true nature of a shell mound.

The Kasori Shell Mounds in the city of Chiba are known for their scale. The northern mound forms a doughnut shape roughly 140 meters across, and the southern one a horseshoe shape with a long axis of about 190 meters; they are said to have been built up over several hundred to more than a thousand years, from the Middle to the Late Jomon period. A single settlement kept piling shells in the same place across generations. That thickness is also proof that people had put down roots there for a long time.

What matters here is that a shell mound is made of ‘the remains of what was used up.’ The flesh of shellfish is eaten, the meat of fish and beasts is eaten, and the bones and shells remain. Pottery was used until it broke; stone tools were used until they wore down. This is utterly different in its making from the ‘things still usable yet thrown away’ that we produce in such quantity today. A shell mound was, so to speak, the sediment of a life that used resources to the very last.

Rethinking the Word ‘Garbage Dump’

So why did people come to say that a shell mound was not merely a garbage dump? The clue lies in the ‘unnatural arrangements’ found mingled among the heaps of shells. At several shell mounds, traces have been reported of deer skulls encircled by stones, or of animal bones laid out with care. At the Kitakogane Shell Midden in Hokkaido, traces of rituals using deer antlers and bones are said to have been found beside a spot where water welled up.

Furthermore, human bones are unearthed from many shell mounds. In some cases, large numbers of human bones are found gathered together, suggesting that shell mounds were also used as burial grounds. And not only humans: there are also known examples of dogs — close companions to the Jomon people — being carefully buried. It is hard to imagine burying one’s own kin or a beloved animal in a place for discarding leftovers — and from there, the understanding of shell mounds as places of prayer spread.

The Jomon people are conjectured to have believed that a spirit dwelt in every single thing around them. If so, they would have hesitated simply to fling away the bones of the shellfish, fish, and beasts that had kept them alive. To give thanks for what they had been fed, and to send its soul back to where it came from — some researchers think a shell mound was also a place where such an ‘exchange of life’ was carried out. The white hill of shells may also have been an accumulation of gratitude and prayer.

A Cyclical Society, and Its Limits

What a shell mound reflects is the shape of a life that used resources to the last and lived close to the turning of nature. Shellfish were gathered by the season, and gather too many and the next year’s harvest would shrink. Beasts, fish, and nuts too — they took their share only within the range that nature would produce anew. The Jomon people did not exhaust everything; rather, they placed their own lives within the very ring of nature’s cycle, kept turning — so it can be portrayed. The fact that no conspicuous traces of large-scale environmental destruction stand out across more than ten thousand years also supports this view.

‘The wisdom of not discarding’ had, in one aspect, less the character of a virtue chosen as an ideal than of a way of living that was necessary in order to survive on limited resources. To use a thing to the very last was not because there was abundance, but in part because the next one was not easily obtained. Seen this way, behind the dazzle of the phrase ‘recycling society,’ there comes into view the toughness and earnestness of people who had no choice but to keep coming to terms with nature.

Even so, what a shell mound speaks to us is not small. To use up the life one has taken in hand, and to return what remains to the earth together with prayer. They continued this practice for thousands of years. What is abundance? What is enough? — the white hill of shells leaves the questions behind quietly, without forcing an answer. And at the heart of this life, there was always an unseen prayer. Next time, we will venture into the spiritual world of Jomon, given form by clay figurines and stone circles.