Date of Award

3-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Art

First Advisor

Kristin Landry

Second Advisor

Sara K. Berkowitz

Third Advisor

Marie Cummings

Abstract

Shakōki-dogū are prehistoric clay figurines from Japan’s Final Jōmon period, characterized by enlarged, goggle-eyed features. In both scholarship writing and museum display texts, generalized thematic labels or iconographic readings sometimes reduce the corpus’s internal variability. This study examines a focused set of Final Jōmon shakōki-dogū from northern Honshū (Tōhoku) and Hokkaidō (Figures 2–6) through their formal and material evidence—shape, surface treatment, and condition—read alongside published excavation reports and catalogue records. It asks what these figurines can be shown to do, as prehistoric artworks, within death-related practice when interpretation is anchored to observable features and documented context, rather than to a single decoded meaning. This thesis argues that shakōki-dogū can be understood as funerary objects that mediate between the living and the dead, even when recovered in settlement-adjacent settings; this framing helps explain why they are reported both near burials and within settlement deposits. Because Final Jōmon mortuary activity is frequently reported in close proximity to lived space, recovery from settlement contexts does not automatically exclude funerary association; instead, recovery setting is treated as a contextual constraint evaluated alongside object evidence. Across the corpus, the analysis records repeatable configuration strategies—ocular dominance, strict frontality, bodily containment, surface zoning—alongside fabrication indicators, surface treatment, and condition patterning, including fragmentation and differential wear. Together, these variables provide comparable evidence across intact and fragmentary examples without treating fixed iconographic assignments as the sole basis for interpretation. Geographic scope relies on Appendix A maps (Figures A.1 and A.7) to situate the corpus within the northern Japanese archipelago; environmental discussion remains proportional to object-led evidence and addresses how materials, firing constraints, and depositional conditions shape what survives. The thesis separates descriptive results (Chapter 4) from interpretive discussion (Chapter 5) and demonstrates how modern interpretive labels—especially inherited “fertility figurine” framing can pre-structure description when contextual reporting is minimal. By foregrounding configuration, material traces, and documented context, this research offers a replicable art-historical model for analyzing visual strategies within Final Jōmon practice without relying on typology-only cataloging or one-to-one iconographic translation.

Research Highlights

The Problem: The study addresses how generalized thematic labels and iconographic readings in scholarship and museum texts can reduce the internal variability of shakōki-dogū figurines. 

The Method: An object-based formal art-historical analysis was applied to a corpus of five Final Jōmon figurines (Figures 2–6) from northern Honshū and Hokkaidō, evaluating repeatable configuration strategies, material fabrication traces, and condition patterning against published excavation reports. 

Qualitative Finding: Shakōki-dogū function as funerary objects mediating between the living and the dead; recurring visual strategies include ocular dominance, strict frontality, bodily containment, and surface zoning; recovery from settlement-adjacent settings does not exclude funerary association due to the proximity of Jōmon mortuary and habitation spaces.

Finding: Modern interpretive labels, specifically inherited "fertility figurine" frameworks, can pre-structure object description and bias analysis when contextual reporting is minimal.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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