A BASIC STUDY ON THE SAME DESIGN TANKO IN MIDDLE KOFUN PERIOD

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It has been suggested that the military system organized by the centralized polity of Yamato covered a wide area in Middle Kofun Period. This view is based upon the increased number of medium and small-sized tumuli which mainly yielded iron armor, but few attempts have been made to show how the iron armor came to be buried in tumuli in various parts of Japan.In order to explore this point, a systematic study is needed on the same design artifacts which made the most of armor's complicated structure. If we reveal the actual condition and the geographical distribution of those same design artifacts, then we can examine the production and circulation of iron armor concretely. In this study, therefore, the author deals with the horizontal rectangular plate armor which has been found most frequently as iron armor of Middle Kofun Period, and attempts to sort out the same design armor.The author collects the detailed data on the horizontal rectangular plate armor throughout Japan. By analyzing those data, it is clear that among the horizontal rectangular plate armor which prospered in the later phase of Middle Kofun Period, there were two types of technical trend: the trend which was influenced by the riveted tanko armor of triangular plates, and the trend which was newly formed at the stage of the mass production of the horizontal rectangular plate armor. Based upon this fact, the detailed analysis of the artifacts with similar characteristics enables us to observe the existence of the same design armor, which seems to have been the minimum unit of the production process.