S P O T ／ SPOT-329

Tatetsuki Site

楯築遺跡たてつきいせき

On a residential hill in Kurashiki stands something that looks less like an archaeological site than a Bronze Age stone circle: five great megaliths ringing the summit of an earthen mound, raised some 1,800 years ago. This is the Tatetsuki Site, a mounded tomb of the late Yayoi period (second half of the 2nd century CE) and one of the largest in all Japan, with a strange 'double square-circle' plan some 83 meters long. Excavations in the 1970s and 80s revealed, beneath the megaliths, a wooden coffin lined thickly with red cinnabar, an iron sword, and thousands of glass beads, the burial of a powerful chieftain from the age of Queen Himiko. Even more remarkable is the arc-pattern stone unearthed here, its entire surface carved with whirling band designs that prefigure the ritual patterns of the later kofun tombs; it survives today as the sacred body of Tatetsuki Shrine on the summit. Designated a National Historic Site in 1981, Tatetsuki is the rare place where you can stand among genuine megaliths, free and unfenced, on the threshold between Yayoi society and the coming age of the great tombs.