Sugisawadai Site
archaeological site in Noshiro, Japan

The Sugisawadai ruins (杉沢台遺跡, Sugisawadai iseki) is an archaeological site containing the ruins of a large Jōmon period settlement located in the Iwao neighborhood or the city of Noshiro, Akita in the Tōhoku region of Japan. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 1981.
Overview
The Sugisawadai ruins are located on the north side of the Shinonome Plateau, at an elevation of about 35 meters in the lower Yonedai River area, near the Sea of Japan. It is a large village site centering on the first half of the Jōmon period and extends over an area of 35,000 square meters. As a result of excavation surveys by the Akita Prefectural Board of Education and the Noshiro City Board of Education since 1980, a number of remains were confirmed. These included the foundations of 44 pit dwellings, including 4 large oval longhouse-style dwellings. One of these structures had a length of 31 meters, and is thought to have served for some ceremonial purpose. The site also has 109 flask-shaped storage pits for food storage. Many of the flask-shaped storage holes were two meters deep, and some contained the remnants of discarded shells. Of note was a polished stone axe from the early Jōmon period which was made of a type of stone found only in the Hidaka region of Hokkaidō.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11522197. Authority coordinates are 40.255, 140.051. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sugisawadai Site” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.