Ōdai Yamamoto I Site

The Ōdai Yamamoto I Site (大平山元I遺跡, Ōdaiyamamoto ichi iseki) is a Jōmon archaeological site in the town of Sotogahama, Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan. Excavations in 1998 uncovered forty-six earthenware fragments which have been dated as early as 14,500 BC (ca 16,500 BP); this places them among the earliest pottery currently known. As the earliest in Japan, this marks the transition from the Japanese Paleolithic to Incipient Jōmon. Other pottery of a similar date has been found at Gasya and Khummi on the lower Amur River. Such a date puts the development of pottery before the warming at the end of the Pleistocene.