Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines

Abstract

The authors show that the Jomon clay figurines made by hunter-gatherers use imagery that emphasises a narrow waist and full hips, showing that a female construct was part of the symbolism of these possibly shamanistic objects. In creating these figurines, prehistoric people were no doubt turning a recognition of health and fertility into more cultural icons. Admirers of the female form will be interested to learn that preference for the fuller, curvaceous 'hourglass' shape has probably been the norm over much of human evolution'.

Full text

Research
Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines
Mark J. Hudson
∗
& Mami Aoyama
∗
The authors show that the Jomon clay figurines made by hunter-gatherers use imagery that
emphasises a narrow waist and full hips, showing that a female construct was part of the
symbolism of these possibly shamanistic objects. In creating these figurines, prehistoric people were
no doubt turning a recognition of health and fertility into more cultural icons. Admirers of the
female form will be interested to learn that preference for the fuller, curvaceous ‘hourglass’ shape
‘has probably been the norm over much of human evolution’.
Keywords: Prehistoric, Japan, Jomon culture, clay figurines, cult objects, gender, sex,
waist-to-hip ratio
Introduction
Jomon Japan was one of the main centres of ceramic figurine production in the prehistoric
world. Within Japanese archaeology there has been a long debate over the meaning and
function of these figurines and a broad range of analytical approaches exists even in the
English literature (e.g. Kidder 1965; Maringer 1974; Nagamine 1986; Yamagata 1992;
Naumann 2000; Ikawa-Smith 2002; Matsumoto 2004; Togawa 2004; Kawashima 2005).
Unlike many other regions, such as south-east Europe and Mesoamerica, Jomon figurines
are associated with a hunter-gatherer economy – although the term ‘Neolithic’ is often
applied to the Jomon because of the presence of pottery and relatively sedentary villages.
Despite this different economic context, however, the interpretation of Jomon figurines
has been remarkably similar to that in other parts of the world, in that most scholars
have traditionally assumed that the figurines are primarily female and can be associated
with fertility and reproduction (Figure 1). More recent work has begun to emphasise the
diversity of representations within the Jomon figurine corpus; in this context, figurine
research has become one of the main areas in which debate on gender and archaeology has
been conducted in Japan (e.g. Ikawa-Smith 2002; Matsumoto 2004).
In this paper we attempt to look at Jomon figurines from a new perspective, that of
the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Our primary aim is to further the understanding of the
representation of sex on these figurines. Humans display a marked sexual dimorphism in
body shape which is unusual amongst primates (Schultz 1969). A significant part of this
dimorphism is the ratio between waist and hips. Human WHRs have a bimodal distribution
with little overlap between the sexes (Molarius et al. 1999) and, despite geographic
∗
Department of Occupational Therapy, University of West Kyushu, Nagahara Campus, Osaki 4490-9, Kanzaki
City, Saga 842-8585, Japan (Email: hudsonm@nisikyu-u.ac.jp & aoyamam@nisikyu-u.ac.jp)
Received: 17 March 2006; Accepted: 6 September 2006; Revised: 13 November 2006
antiquity 81 (2007): 961–971
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Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines
Figure 1. Middle Jomon figurine from the Tanabatake site,
Nagano Prefecture. Height: 27cm.
variation in actual values, ‘male WHR has
exceeded female WHR in all published reports’
(Singh 2002: 81). In recent years the WHR
has received growing attention in medical
and related fields due to its importance as
an indicator of health, particularly female
reproductive health. A range of medical
studies from several countries supports
the idea that female WHR is a reliable
indicator of reproductive endrocrinal status
and fecundity (DeRidder et al. 1990;
Zaadstra et al. 1993; Singh 1993; 2002;
Guo et al. 1994; Kissebah & Krakower
1994; Wass et al. 1997). Psychological
testing has found that both men and
women tend to find a low WHR—usually
around 0.7—attractive in females (Singh
1993; 1994; Henss 1995; 2000; Furnham
et al. 1997; 1998). Actual WHR for
healthy premenopausal women is 0.67-
0.80 and 0.85-0.95 for healthy men (Marti
et al. 1991). A study of men in northern
Norway found slight seasonal variations in
WHR (Svartberg et al. 2003), probably
because abdominal fat is typically greatest in
the early autumn (Zahorska-Markiewicz &
Markiewicz 1984). This seasonal WHR
variation most likely also applies to women
but, although prehistoric hunter-gatherers
may have had greater variation in seasonal
fat levels than modern populations, this
change would have little or no effect on
the basic approach followed here.
Two aspects of WHR research are of relevance for this paper. Firstly, this ratio exists as a
real difference between males and females, yet it is a secondary sexual trait that has yet to be
formally discussed in figurine studies, although some archaeologists have noted that certain
figurines do have female ‘body proportions’ (Yamagata 1992: 131). Secondly, studies of
prehistoric figurines may be able to help us understand if preference for a low female WHR
is a universal human trait. If preference for low female WHR is universal, then it should be
present amongst hunter-gatherer populations (Marlowe et al. 2005). Many studies of WHR
preferences have used university students in North America and Europe as test subjects, but
similar findings have come from non-Western samples such as groups in Indonesia (Singh &
Luis 1995), India (Singh 2002), Africa (Singh 2002), the Azore Islands (Singh 2002), and
China (Dixson et al. 2007). Studies of swidden farmers in Peru (Yu & Shepard 1998) and
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Mark J. Hudson & Mami Aoyama
hunter-gatherers in Tanzania (Westman & Marlowe 1999; Marlowe & Westman 2001)
suggested that low WHR values may not be culturally invariant, although a recent paper by
Marlowe et al. (2005) found that when profile WHRs were taken into consideration there
was less difference between the preferences of Hadza and American men.
Our main proposal underpinning this paper is that WHRs can be used to analyse the
sex of archaeological representations of the human body. Singh (2002) has previously used
this feature to examine ancient sculptures and figurines, but he used examples where sex
was unambiguously represented in order to test the WHR hypothesis in traditional, non-
Western contexts. Using materials from ancient India, Africa, Greece and Egypt, Singh
found that although there was variation between cultures in preferred WHR values, in all
four cases the mean female WHR was significantly lower than the mean male WHR (Singh
2002: 90-92). Singh’s analysis demonstrated the potential of this type of approach, but his
sample was comprised of sculptures from agricultural societies alone whereas in the analysis
below we extend this approach to hunter-gatherers.
Materials and methods
In this paper we use clay figurines from the hunter-gatherer Jomon tradition of Japan.
The Jomon can be dated from about 16 500 to 2500 BP, although most clay figurines
date from the second half of that period (Habu 2004). Despite the presence of some plant
and animal management and possible limited plant cultivation, the Jomon was primarily a
hunter-gatherer society (Nishida 1983; Habu 2004).
Some 10 683 Jomon figurines had been documented by 1991 and a decade later Ikawa-
Smith (2002) estimated the total at about 15 000. Though numerous, many figurines are
excavated in a broken condition and it has been argued that intentional breakage may have
been part of the figurine ritual (cf. Ikawa-Smith 2002; Kawashima 2005). This breakage
significantly reduces the number of examples that can be used for the type of analysis
attempted here.
The figurines used for this analysis date from the Early, Middle, Late and Final phases
of the Jomon period, although there were only five examples from the Early Jomon. The
figurines come from 16 prefectures, which are mainly located in the deciduous forest zone of
north-eastern Japan: Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Gunma,
Tokyo, Yamanashi, Nagano, Kanagawa, Niigata, Toyama, Shizuoka and Gifu. 155 Jomon
figurines were analysed using published scale drawings in the four volume Dog
ˆ
uKenky
ˆ
uno
Chihei [Horizons in Figurine Research] series (Yaegashi 1997-2000). Digital calipers were
used to measure the waist and hip sizes of the figurines from the published drawings and
the ratios were then calculated from these figures. Following Singh (2002: 91), the waist
was measured at the narrowest part of the torso and the hips at the widest point of the
upper portion of the pubic area. Measurements were made to two decimal places. Only
figurines with undamaged torsos and pubic areas were measured. Figurines without legs
were excluded unless the pubic area was undamaged and realistically depicted.
Some examples of the figurines analysed here are shown in Figure 2. Although the waists
of many figurines are realistic, the hips are often exaggerated by the use of wide legs (Figure 2:
1, 3, 4). Other examples have extra clay added to the outside of the hips to increase hip
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Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines
Figure 2. Examples of Jomon figurines used in this analysis. 1: Kanai, Iwate (Late Jomon. Height: 16.5cm). 2: Bibi 4,
Hokkaido (Late Jomon. Height: 20cm). 3: Yagimaki Itakozuka, Iwate (Late Jomon. Height: 9.6cm). 4: Kamitonai III,
Iwate (Late Jomon. Height: 15cm). 5: Utetsu, Aomori (Final Jomon. Height: 22.2cm). Scale drawings from Volume 3 of
Yaegashi (1997-2000).
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Mark J. Hudson & Mami Aoyama
breadth (Figure 2: 2, 5). As very small waists would make the figurine overly fragile, these
are probably simple techniques to emphasise the difference between the waist and hips. In
our Figure 2, figurine number 5 has unusually large breasts and a swollen abdomen. The
depiction of these features on figurine number 2 is more typical of the sample used here.
Although figurine number 1 has a slightly projecting abdomen, this was considered to be
too small to score.
In clinical studies, the WHR is measured using the circumference of the waist and hips,
but most psychological tests have used two-dimensional frontal drawings or photographs.
Figurines give us the opportunity to study ‘real’, i.e. three-dimensional rather than simply
frontal WHRs, a difference that Marlowe and Westman (2001) argue may be important in
subsistence-oriented societies where males may select for fatter women. On this occasion,
however, we limited our analysis to frontal measurements for two reasons. Firstly, with the
major exception of some parts of eastern Japan in the Middle Jomon phase, little emphasis is
given to the buttocks of many Jomon figurines and it is consequently unclear to what extent
they were designed to be seen in profile. Secondly, not all the published drawings used here
have side views and omitting these figurines would have greatly reduced the sample size.
The figurines analysed in this paper are typical of Jomon figurines in that many have
breasts, some have swollen abdomens presumably depicting pregnancy, and a fe w have
apparent vulvas or pubic triangles. No Jomon figurines have clear male genitals (although
these are depicted in other media, notably phallic ‘stone rods’). From these features many
Japanese archaeologists have assumed that, taken as a whole, the figurines are primarily
female. However, a significant proportion of Jomon figurines do not havebreastsorother
obviously female features (Ikawa-Smith 2002). Watanabe (1997: 885), for example, found
that 31 per cent of a sample of 451 figurines did not have breasts. Where present, Jomon
figurine breasts are typically ‘small’, i.e. not exaggerated. While it could thus be argued that
some of the ‘breasts’ may have been simply designed to represent male nipples, it is also
the case that, as regards size, these breasts are often not unrealistic depictions of the female
body.
The presence of breasts and/or swollen abdomens was recorded for each of the figurines
examined here (Table 1). Cases where this was uncertain from the scale drawings were noted
as such. Breasts were present on 65.16 per cent of figurines while 31.61 per cent had swollen
abdomens. Depictions of breasts were much more common in the Middle and Late phases
than in the Final Jomon (Table 1). T-tests were used to test for correlations between WHR
and the presence of breasts and swollen bellies.
Results
Overall, our data display a clear bias toward low WHRs. Figurines with a WHR of 0.7 or
less comprised 70.32 per cent of the total. WHR values for the figurines ranged from 0.26 to
1.04. The mean WHR for the total sample was 0.64 (SD 0.15). This value increased slightly
from the Early and Middle phases, when the means were both 0.59, to the Late and Final
phases, which were both 0.66. This difference in means is small when compared with inter-
sample variation in some modern psychological tests. Figure 3 plots the number of figurines
against WHR. While this distribution is broad, it is similar to t hat of the ancient statues
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Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines
Table 1. Percentage of figurines with depictions of breasts and swollen bellies. Numbers of figurines
are shown in parentheses.
Early Jomon Middle Jomon Late Jomon Final Jomon Total
Breasts present 25 (1) 68.57 (24) 78.69 (48) 51.85 (28) 65.16 (101)
Breasts absent 75 (3) 5.71 (2) 9.84 (6) 37.04 (20) 20 (31)
Damaged/unclear 0 25.71 (9) 11.47 (7) 11.11 (6) 14.19 (22)
Swollen belly present 0 31.43 (11) 45.9 (28) 18.52 (10) 31.61 (49)
Swollen belly absent 100 (4) 62.86 (22) 44.26 (27) 55.55 (30) 53.55 (83)
Damaged/unclear 0 5.71 (2) 9.84 (6) 25.93 (14) 14.19 (22)
Figure 3. Graph of WHR distribution of the analysed figurines.
analysed by Singh (2002) which have WHRs ranging from about 0.2 to 1.0, as estimated
from Singh’s Figure 6. Unlike Singh’s data, however, the figurines examined here do not
display a clear bimodal distribution related to sexual dimorphism. When compared with
the graphs produced by Marlowe and Westman (2001) using their results from American
and Hadza men, the shape of our Figure 3 is closest to the ‘attractiveness’ ranking given
by American men with its peak at 0.7 and sharp decline for higher values. The shape of
our graph does not approximate to any of the hunter-gatherer Hadza graphs which show a
gradual increase in mean preference from low to high WHR values (Marlowe & Westman
2001: 485-86).
T-tests found no significant correlation between WHR and the presence/absence of breasts
(p 0.1567) or swollen abdomens ( p 0.3486). The mean WHR for figurines with swollen
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abdomens (0.647) was slightly higher than that of figurines without that trait (0.622), as one
would expect if the bellies were meant to depict pregnancy. In the case of breasts, however,
figurines without breasts had a lower mean WHR (0.619) than those with breasts (0.659),
the opposite of what one would expect if the presence/absence of breasts was the sole direct
indicator of sex.
Reported WHRs for contemporar y hunter-gatherer women are slightly higher than those
in other populations, ranging from 0.79 to 0.89 if one includes a mixed horticulturalist-
forager group from Ecuador (Sahani 2003; Sugiyama 2004; Marlowe et al. 2005). Only
5.81 per cent of the figurines examined here have a WHR of 0.9 or greater; of these, with
the exception of two examples that are damaged, all (n = 7) have breasts.
Discussion
Although the bodies of Jomon figurines are anthropomorphic, their faces are rarely realistic
depictions of human faces. Some figurines can be classified as therioanthropic, i.e. they
combine human and animal elements (Kidder 1965; Maringer 1974). The figurines probably
had a variety of functions over the long duration of the Jomon period (Nagamine 1986),
but Tatsuo Kobayashi (2004) has argued that they mostly represent mythological rather
than human beings. In this analysis our primary interest is in Jomon clay figurines as
anthropomorphic images and, in particular, in how Jomon artists depicted the waist/hip
areas of these figurines. In this respect, the following comments by Kobayashi are worth
citing in full: ‘One aspect of Jomon figurines t hat is especially intriguing is that the people who
made them decorated the clay bodies in ways which were familiar to the people themselves,
using earrings, tattoos on the face and around the mouth, and red pigments, perhaps similar
to the colours they daubed on their own skins. Therefore, even though these figurines were not
representations of people, at least to some extent their makers could not help projecting something of
themselves on to these figures, on which they lavished considerable effort and labour. Consequently,
despite not being images of Jomon people themselves, the figurines do reveal something of how
Jomon people looked, or would liked themselves to have looked ...’(Kobayashi 2004: 149-51).
Kobayashi’s argument is that although Jomon figurines are not necessarily direct, realistic
representations of actual humans, nevertheless they incorporate realistic elements in their
design. The same point has been made by Maringer (1974: 134). In this article we propose
that the WHR is one such actual realistic element that, perhaps sometimes unconsciously,
was incorporated into the design of Jomon figurines. Whatever the ultimate ‘meaning’ of
Jomon figurines, therefore, it can be reasonably assumed that a low WHR represents a
female element whereas a high WHR represents a male element. It needs to be stressed that
in order for an analysis of WHRs to proceed, it is not necessary that the figurine as a whole be
either male or female. Therioanthropic representations are often associated with shamanism
(e.g. Jolly 2002). Jomon figurines may be complex representations of status, gender and
other roles, but we assume that a low WHR is a female element that was used to construct
such identities in Jomon art. The lack of a bimodal WHR distribution and the fact that
the figurines with high WHRs also had breasts could suggest that all of the figurines in the
Jomon sample used here were meant to depict females. At the very least, our results imply
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that all of the figurines were designed to include biologically female ‘elements’. T his does not
necessarily mean, of course, that all of the figurines represent women. The presence of breasts
and a high WHR on some figurines may reflect ideas about a mixed gender – or may simply
be a way of depicting pregnancy. Jomon figurines are cultural artefacts and were therefore
produced according to cultural r ules and strategies that incorporated concepts of gender.
The fact that many of the figurines had extremely low WHRs that do not actually exist
in healthy women suggests that Jomon people were deliberately depictings an exaggerated
WHR since it was perceived to be an important trait in Jomon society. Although most
psychological tests have not used WHRs lower than 0.7, Heaney (2000) found that male
subjects chose female WHR values as low as 0.5 when they were included in tests (cited in
Swami et al. 2006).
It should be noted that the results described here support the importance of a low WHR
in Jomon society whatever the ultimate meanings/functions of Jomon figurines. Kawashima
(2005) has recently argued that, at least in the Late-Final Jomon Angyo phase of the Kanto
region, figurines were probably associated with long-term use at specific settlements rather
than being generally distributed across the region. From this he suggests that, ‘there is
little possibility that figurines belonged to ordinary people’ (Kawashima 2005: 184). However,
even if Jomon fi gurines were not direct representations of what individual Jomon men
would have preferred their female mates to look like – which anyway seems unlikely given
the many animal-like heads – then that would not rule out the probability that those
figurines were made and classified using biological as well as cultural ideas of ‘male’ and
‘female’.
Although our results support a preference for low WHRs in Jomon society, it remains
unclear if Jomon figurines were actually made by men or women. Studies of inter-sex
preferences for female body shapes in contemporary populations typically produce rather
complex results (e.g. Furnham et al. 1990). It is certainly possible that Jomon figurines were
primarily made by women who attempted to depict female figures according to accepted
preferences and conventions in Jomon society. Although the exaggeratedly low WHR of
many Jomon figurines may suggest that they were, in fact, made by men, the representation
of breasts is problematic in this respect. If enlarged breasts are an honest signal of residual
reproductive value in humans (Marlowe 1998), then we might expect men to depict larger
breasts than are typically found on Jomon figurines.
A broader objection that could be raised with respect to the analysis conducted here is that
biological sex is irrelevant to an understanding of figurines as cultural artefacts (Hamilton
1996). In this respect, however, we would argue that biological sex and associated sexual
dimorphisms such as WHR provide an invaluable resource for understanding the construction
of gender in ancient societies. A similar case can be made for the importance of traditional
skeletal ‘biodistance’ analyses in understanding the construction of ethnicity (Hudson 1999;
Matsumura et al. 2006).
Finally, two other, more technical issues need to be raised with respect to our use of the
WHR. First, it has been noted that the WHR contains two components – hip size and waist
size – which may have different meanings in a particular society. Hip size indicates pelvic size
and fat storage, whereas waist size relates to current reproductive or health status (Romus-
Wrzesinska & Pawlowski 2005). While we accept that this difference may be important, it
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is difficult to study using clay figurines since, as noted already, there are structural limits on
waist size which mean that the WHR on Jomon figurines is probably manipulated primarily
by increasing hip size. Amongst contemporary Western populations, in assessing female
WHR differences men seem to be more influenced by change in waist rather than hip size
(Romus-Wrzesinska & Pawlowski 2005). As these authors point out, however, this may
reflect recent improved living conditions in the West that reduce the need for the fat storage
around the hips and thighs that would give an advantage to hunter-gatherer women subject
to seasonal food stress (Romus-Wrzesinska & Pawlowski 2005: 305).
A second question is the influence of culturally-constructed gender roles on WHR
preferences. In interpreting their finding that WHR was a significant predictor of female
attractiveness for a sample of Greek men but not for a sample of British men, Swami et al.
(2006) suggest that different perceptions of gender roles may have influenced their results.
While we accept that such perceptions were probably present in the Jomon, at present we
can only speculate about the actual nature of gender roles in Jomon society. The results here
show a remarkably small difference in WHR means over the Jomon period, although future
work could look in more detail at regional variations. Our results thus do not contradict
the hypothesis that, although there has recently been a shift in certain Western countries
from a ‘fuller, curvaceous “hourglass” shape toward a substantially thinner standard of female
body shape’ (Furnham et al. 1990: 744), preference for the former shape has probably been
the norm over much of human evolution.
Conclusions
Bailey (2005: 202) writes that the figurines of the Neolithic Balkans prefer ‘the complex and
convoluted to the straightforward and clear.’ Although the meaning(s) of that complexity and
convolution would no doubt have been quite different, the same point largely holds for
the figurines of Jomon Japan. The analysis conducted in this paper does not necessarily
make Jomon figurines more ‘straightforward’ and certainly should not be seen as an attempt
to reduce complex representations of gender to biological sex. On the contrary, we have
argued that study of WHRs has the potential to inform us about cultural constructions
of male and female forms and gender in Jomon society. For example, our data suggest
the possibility of complex representations of figures with female breasts but a male WHR.
Although the sample used here was very small, perhaps only one percent of the total number
of Jomon figurines, our analysis has demonstrated that WHRs are a useful addition to
existing archaeological approaches to prehistoric figurines. The results in this paper are also
consistent with the hypothesis of a universal human preference for low female WHRs, thus
showing that archaeological materials can be of use in studying problems in evolutionary
psychology.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented in a session on ‘Gender and symbiosis’ at the World Archaeological
Congress Osaka Inter-congress, January 2006. We thank the session chairs, Yoshimi Kawashukuda and Yumiko
Ogawa, and the discussant, Joan Gero, for their comments. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers
for their helpful advice.
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