Goshono Site and Sannai Maruyama Site

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Goshono Site

   In the hills of northern Iwate, a short ride from the town of Ichinohe, a group of round houses with grass-covered roofs sits in a quiet clearing among cedar and broadleaf woods. They look like something out of a fairy tale, low mounds with doorways and smoke holes, and they are reconstructions of pit dwellings from the Jomon period, the long prehistoric era of hunter-gatherers who lived in Japan from around fifteen thousand years ago until the arrival of rice farming. The Goshono site was a large settlement in the middle Jomon period, and excavations found that some houses here were roofed with earth rather than thatch, which is why the reconstructions look the way they do. Since 2021 it has been one of the components of the World Heritage site of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan.

   Read the complete Goshono Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Goshono Site is where the day begins. Next is Futatsumori Site.

2. 2. Futatsumori Site

   Futatsumori is a gentle hilltop near the town of Shichinohe in Aomori prefecture, overlooking Lake Ogawara, and to an untrained eye it is simply a grassy field among woods and farmland. But this is one of the largest shell mounds in the Tōhoku region, piled up by Jōmon people over thousands of years as they gathered shellfish from the lake and the sea, and it belongs to the same World Heritage group of Jōmon sites as the better-known Sannai-Maruyama. The shell heaps, rich in calcium, neutralised the acid soil and preserved bones, tools and ornaments that would otherwise have dissolved.

   Read the complete Futatsumori Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Futatsumori Site comes up about 86 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sannai Maruyama Site.

3. 3. Sannai Maruyama Site

   On the outskirts of Aomori, at the northern tip of Honshu, archaeologists working on a site for a baseball stadium in the early 1990s found the remains of a large village of the Jomon period, a hunter gatherer culture that lived in Japan for over ten thousand years. Sannai Maruyama was occupied for around a thousand years, from about 5,900 to 4,200 years ago, and its finds changed ideas about the Jomon: long houses, pit dwellings, storehouses, burial grounds, and a huge structure of six massive chestnut posts, now reconstructed as a tall wooden tower. In 2021 it became part of the World Heritage listing of Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan.

   Read the complete Sannai Maruyama Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 155 km into the recorded legs you reach Sannai Maruyama Site. Next is back through Futatsumori Site.

4. 4. back through Futatsumori Site

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Futatsumori Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Futatsumori Site, late in the day. Next is Goshono Site.

5. 5. Goshono Site

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Goshono Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Goshono Site. That is the ride.