The Archaeology of Everyday Life in Late Medieval Japan

This talk will introduce the provincial urban city of Ichijōdani, which peaked in the sixteenth century, a period usually associated primarily with political incohesion and endemic warfare. The archaeological evidence from Ichijōdani, particularly when put into conversation with excavated materials from other urban sites in Japan, illuminates the rhythms and logic of daily life for the many medieval Japanese who lived in urban agglomerates other than the capital city of Kyoto. I will also consider the destruction of this provincial city in 1573 and the meaning of that erasure for our understanding of both the period in which it took place and the larger metanarrative of Japanese history.