黒塚古墳の発掘調査

河上 邦彦, 泉 武, 宮原 晋一, 卜部 行弘, 岡林 孝作, 名倉 聡

doi:10.11215/nihonkokogaku1994.6.95

Kurozuka Kofun is a keyhole-shaped mounded tomb 130 m in overall length, with the rectangular portion of the keyhole facing west, located in the district of Yanagimoto in Tenri City, Nara Prefecture, in the southeastern portion of the Nara basin. A large number of Early Kofun period tombs lie concentrated in the surrounding area, a formation called the yamato tomb group. From August 1997 to May 1998, and from July 1998 to February 1999, excavations for the purpose of research were carried out by the yamato Tomb Group Investigation Committee, comprised mainly of personnel of the Kashihara Archaeological Institute of Nara Prefecture and the Board of Education of Tenri City. The burial facility was a large-scaled vertical stone chamber measuring approximately 8.3 m internally in length, placed in a north-south orientation in the center of the round portion of the mound. Stones used for the chamber included round river stones, and slabs of andesite from Kasugayama, and basalt from Shibayama, both in Kashiwara City, Osaka Prefecture. In addition to being furnished with a stone-lined drainage ditch, it became evident that during the construction of the stone chamber, the mound featured a work road cut through its round portion and leading toward the rectangular part of the keyhole. The coffin placed within the stone chamber was in the shape of a split log, hewn from a single large tree of the mulberry family, 6.2 m long and over 1 m in greatest width. During the medieval period the chamber was extensively dug by grave robbers, but fortunately because it had collapsed prior to that time, the digging did not for the most part extend to the chamber floor. As a result, the bulk of the grave goods escaped disturbance subsequent to interment, and the state in which they were buried was miraculously preserved. The grave goods were rich, including thirty-three deity-and-beast mirrors with rims that are triangular in cross-section, another deity-and-beast mirror having a wide image band (gamontai) near the perimeter, plus large amounts of iron weapons, armor, and agricultural tools. The thirty-three triangular-rimmed mirrors were all imported items, including no examples bearing a three-deity/three-beast arrangement, and comprising the oldest known cache of such items to date. Fifteen of the triangular-rimmed mirrors have duplicates within the same cache, representing seven different sets each of which was made from a single mold or model, and ten such duplicate sets are also shared with the Tsubai tsukayama tomb in Yamashiro Town, Kyoto Prefecture. Only the single gamontai mirror was placed within the coffin, accompanied by swords, with the remaining mirrors inserted in the interval between the coffin and the chamber walls. All of the triangular-rimmed mirrors were placed with the reflecting surface facing the coffin, seventeen on the western and fifteen on the eastern sides, with the single mirror on the short northern side completing a U-shaped arrangement around the coffin. These materials are of great value as a rich and concrete example of Early Kofun grave goods and their placement at the time of burial. At the same time, from the existence of the drainage ditch, the work road, the structure of the chamber walls, along with the placement of the grave goods, excellent data have been obtained for making a detailed reconstruction of the tomb and the rituals which attended it. The date of the tomb's construction is thought to be in the first half of the Early Kofun period.

黒塚古墳の発掘調査

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黒塚古墳の発掘調査

書誌事項

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