Umataka Jōmon Museum

The Umataka Jōmon Museum (馬高縄文館, Umataka Jōmon-kan) is a museum in Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, that opened in 2009. Located on the Umataka-Sanjūinaba archaeological site, it serves as the guidance facility for this National Historic Site and is nicknamed the "Flame Pot Museum" for its extensive collection of flame-style and crown-type Jōmon pottery. The museum holds particular significance as the type site for flame pottery, one of the most distinctive and celebrated ceramic traditions of prehistoric Japan, and it functions simultaneously as an exhibition space, a preservation facility for Important Cultural Properties, and an educational center.

The museum's origins are tied to the long history of archaeological investigation at the Umataka-Sanjūinaba Site. The site first drew attention in 1936, when large ritual clay figurines were discovered, and it gained recognition as the origin point of Jōmon "flame style" pottery with its characteristic cockscomb-like rim protrusions. Excavations in the 1950s by the Dutch archaeologist Gerard J. Groot, Waseda University, and the Nagaoka City Board of Education revealed the full extent of the settlement. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 1979. A restored flame-motif pottery jar from the site was designated a national Important Cultural Property in 1990, with the designation expanded in 2002 to include 126 pottery items and 173 stone items collectively. The Umataka Jōmon Museum opened in 2009 to house, display, and study these materials on site.

The museum's holdings center on artifacts from the Umataka-Sanjūinaba Site, spanning two major occupation phases. The Umataka remains in the eastern part of the site date from the mid-Jōmon period, approximately 5,500 to 4,500 years ago, while the Sanjūinaba remains in the western part date from the late Jōmon period, roughly 4,500 to 3,200 years ago. The collection is particularly strong in flame-type and crown-type pottery, which flourished for about 500 years in the middle Jōmon period. The museum also holds stone tools, jade jewelry, clay pulley-shaped earrings, clay figurines (dogu), and other items from the site and from other Jōmon sites in the surrounding area, including the Fujihashi Site. The collection includes materials that demonstrate the evolution of flame pottery from early stubby forms without clearly defined waists to later examples with constricted bodies and broadly flaring decorative rims.

The museum's most celebrated holding is the flame pottery first discovered in Sekihara in 1936, classified by archaeologist Nakamura Kozaburo as "Flame, A-type, no. 1," which became the reference point for flame pottery across Japan. The collection includes both the more common flame type, with four large serrated protrusions, and the crown type, with mountain-peak-like protrusions. A rare shallow‑example of a shallow flame-type bowl from the mid-Jōmon period is also held. The 2002 collective Important Cultural Property designation covers 126 pottery items and 173 stone items from the site. The museum additionally preserves female clay figurines with dish-shaped heads and prominent breasts and navels, most of which survive only as torsos. These figurines are believed to have been used in rituals for harvests and safe childbirth.

The museum stands directly on the Umataka-Sanjūinaba excavation site, located on a hill with an elevation of 60 to 70 meters on the east bank of the Shinano River in the Sekiharamachi neighborhood of Nagaoka. The surrounding area is preserved as a park with reconstructions of pit dwellings. The settlement itself measured 150 meters east-to-west and 250 meters north-to-south. The site preserves evidence of a northern and southern village within the Umataka remains, with rectangular pit dwellings about 8 meters long and 4 meters wide arranged in radial patterns, as well as storage holes, graves with large standing stone markers, communal waste disposal areas, and a three-meter deep clay mining pit in the Sanjūinaba portion.

The Umataka Jōmon Museum is located approximately eight kilometers west of Nagaoka Station on the JR East Joetsu Line, with bus service available from the station. The museum is owned and operated by the city of Nagaoka. Its present role encompasses three functions: exhibiting artifacts and informing the public, housing and preserving Important Cultural Properties of Japan, and educating schoolchildren and others about the site's history. The museum's website is https://www.museum.city.nagaoka.niigata.jp/umataka/. The site and museum are part of the Japan Heritage "story" #026, and visitors can also access the surrounding park with its reconstructed pit dwellings and the preserved archaeological remains.