Excavated Items from the Shirataki Ruins in Hokkaido

One Lot, National Treasure since 2023

Excavated Items from the Shirataki Ruins in Hokkaido (北海道白滝遺跡群出土品, Hokkaido Shirataki Isekigun Shutsudohin) is Palaeolithic archaeological material at 138-1 Shirataki, Engaru Town, Monbetsu District, Hokkaido, made an Important Cultural Property on 27 June 2011 and designated a National Treasure on 27 June 2023. The owner is Engaru Town.

Both listings fall on 27 June. Twelve years separate them, and the day and month agree.

The designation of 27 June 2023 is the most recent met here. The quantity field carries no number, only the word for a lot.

The National Treasure Covers More Than the Earlier Listing

The scope grew between the two steps.

The Agency records that the property comprises the finds from six named sites, listed as an Important Cultural Property in 2011, together with the finds from fifteen further Shirataki sites whose sorting was completed afterwards, making 1,965 pieces in all.

The earlier listing covered six sites. The designation added the material from fifteen more, once it had been sorted.

With the figurine from the Kazabari 1 site, a lot of 664 objects became an Important Cultural Property and one piece of it became a National Treasure. There, one was drawn out of a lot.

Here the reverse: material was added to what the earlier listing covered. Progress in sorting widened the scope.

Between the two cases, both directions now appear: pieces taken out, and pieces put in.

The Reading Given for the Name Is Wrong

The phonetic gloss on the name carries an error.

The heritage database renders the place name as Irataki.

The place is Shirataki. One syllable has been changed.

The historic site at the same place, recorded separately, gives the reading correctly.

Damage in these records has appeared in several forms: a character replaced by a substitute mark at the Ataka and Kurohashi shell mounds, a wrong character in a technical term at Futagoyama, a Roman letter left in the butterfly hand box, a comma for a decimal point with the Odenta tachi, a wrong character in a personal name at the Kanshinji golden hall.

An error in a phonetic reading is new. This article reads the name as Shirataki.

Nineteen Hundred Pieces out of Six and a Half Million

Number and weight are both recorded.

Some 6.69 million objects, weighing about 12 tonnes in total, came out of twenty-three sites.

Not only a count but a weight. Scale stated by weight has not appeared before in these records.

Of that quantity, 1,965 pieces hold the designation: a part of the whole.

Individual pieces are described as well. Among the point-shaped tools are an exceptionally large example 36.3 centimetres long and many leaf-shaped points, along with abundant refitted material in which flakes and cores from their making have been joined back together.

Refitted material means broken stone reassembled as it was. The process of manufacture can be reconstructed from it.

Seeing It

The material is at 138-1 Shirataki, Engaru Town, Monbetsu District, Hokkaido, owned by the town. A town owning a National Treasure appears here for the first time.

Local authorities have owned National Treasures in three earlier cases: the figurines held by Hachinohe City and Hakodate City, and the Koya cutting held by Kochi Prefecture. After cities and a prefecture, a town.

The assessment states its conclusion plainly. Among Palaeolithic finds in Japan the content and the sheer quantity stand out, and as a lot of a character rare even in world terms it is fit to be a National Treasure.

Fit to be a National Treasure: the assessment states the judgement of designation itself.

The site at the same place became a historic site on 9 January 1989. Further ground was added in 1997 and the name changed from the singular to the plural. Exhibition plans can change, so check before travelling.