History of excavation works at Lake Nojiri

Year
(dominical year)
Excavation Major topics and excavated artifacts
1948   Matsunosuke Kato found a cheek tooth (hot-water bottle fossil)
1961   Lakeside dispute Mr. Ijiri’s proposal:“Let’s start excavating anyway.”
1962 1st excavation Found fossils of a Naumann Elephant and an Irish elk
1963 2nd excavation Confirmation of the (last) Ice Age by radioactive age determination and analysis of pollens
1964 3rd excavation Found a flake of a palaeolith
1965 4th excavation Found a part of a head bone of a Naumann Elephant and a 8.5m long wood fossil
1973 5th excavation Found “Crescent and Star”, a knife-shaped stone artifact and a bone artifact An experts group was formed
1975 6th excavation Found a Venus statue (?) and a trace fossil The Nojiriko Association was formed
1976 1st on-land
excavation
Found a knife-shaped stone tool and a dry trace [Nakamachi]
1978 7th excavation Found a head bone of a Naumann Elephant and a fossil of an insect
1979 2nd on-land
excavation
Found a burial pit of a claw-patterned clay pot [Nakamachi]
1981 8th excavation Found a 2.4m long tusk, the oldest bone tool in Japan (bone scraper) and circumstantial evidences for a kill site
1982 3rd on-land
excavation
Excavated a lake shoreline of about 20,000 years old [Mukaishinden] and found a ridge-patterned clay pot [Nakamachi]
1984 9th excavation Found a spiral flake and a coprolite (?)
1987 10th excavation Found a bone cleaver (machete-shaped bone tool)
1990 11th excavation Proved a fossil to be the footprint of a Naumann Elephant
1993 12th excavation Found a rib with line traces (traces of dissection?)
1994 7th on-land
excavation
Found a stone tool of the Upper Old Stone Age [Nakamachi]
1997 13th excavation Found a hammer stone and a bone of the upper arm of a Naumann Elephant
1998 8th on-land
excavation
A lot of stone tools of the Upper Old Stone Age were excavated [Nakamachi]
2000 14th excavation Closely observed the relationship between the fossils and the lamina*
Found a complete set of right and left cheek teeth of a Naumann Elephant
2003 15th excavation Found an ancient shoreline
2006 16th excavation Found a footprint fossil of a Cervus nippon
2008 17th excavation Found a fossil of an Alces alces
2010 18th excavation Found a hammer stone and a cutting tooth (tusk) of a Naumann Elephant
2012 19th excavation Found a cheek tooth of a Naumann Elephant and a flake
2014 20th excavation Found a radius of an Irish elk
2016 21st excavation Found a piece of an upper arm bone of an Irish elk

*Lamina: Means a pattern observed in geological layers, in which patterns are formed according to the way soil and sand accumulate on each other.