Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles and Ofune Site

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles

   Kiusu sits within the city limits of Chitose, but you would never guess it from the gentle forest and the soft ground underfoot. This is one of the strangest ancient monuments in Japan: circular graves enclosed by a raised embankment of earth, made by Jomon people about three thousand years ago. They dug a great ring pit, piled the soil into a bank around it, and placed their dead inside. The largest circles are many metres across, and the earthworks are still easy to read as mounds, grassy and a bit like a stage set. It forms part of the northern Jomon listing, which UNESCO inscribed in 2021. The reason for such labour is still discussed, but the effort tells you the dead mattered to the group.

   Read the complete Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles is where the day begins. Next is Kitakogane Site.

2. 2. Kitakogane Site

   Hokkaido does not usually come to mind when people talk about ancient Japan, yet the shell heaps around Uchiura Bay are some of the oldest signs of settled life in the archipelago. Kitakogane sits on the edge of the bay near Date, roughly halfway between Muroran and the volcanic country around Lake Toya. The Jomon people who lived here gathered shellfish, hunted deer and fished, and they threw the shells onto the same pile for centuries, which is why a modern visitor can read a kitchen midden like a diary. It belongs to the group of northern Jomon sites that UNESCO listed in 2021.

   Read the complete Kitakogane Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Kitakogane Site comes up about 111 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ofune Site.

3. 3. Ofune Site

   Ofune is a Jomon settlement on the southern tip of Hokkaido, in the hills above Hakodate, and it is a lot bigger than the signboards make it look. The Jomon were hunter-gatherers who lived in the northern forests of Japan for something like ten thousand years, long before rice farming, and they built a settled life around chestnuts, fish, deer and the odd well-travelled trade good. Ofune was inhabited for centuries and is now part of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan, which UNESCO recognised in 2021. Reconstructed pit houses hold the grass in place, and the scale of the pits tells you someone intended to stay.

   Read the complete Ofune Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 281 km into the recorded legs you reach Ofune Site. Next is back through Kitakogane Site.

4. 4. back through Kitakogane Site

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Kitakogane Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Kitakogane Site, late in the day. Next is Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles.

5. 5. Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Back at Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles. That is the ride.