Excavated from Ureshino Tenkadera-cho, Matsusaka-shi, Mie
5th century
Height 18.0cm, mouth diameter 12.8cm, body diameter 20.0cm
This is one of the most basic types of Kofun period Sue ware: used from the mid-5th to the 8th century. There are two types of Sue ware: flat-bellied vessels with mouth and neck, and barrel-shaped vessels.
The latter disappeared only in the 5th century. There were two types of vessels, large and small, and large vessels like this one were used as ritual vessels when combined with a vessel stand. It is thought that the large-sized vessels were used as vessels for pouring water by inserting a bamboo stick into a small hole drilled in the center of the body, and a haniwa (clay figurine) excavated from a burial mound in Hamamatsu City depicts this. Early haniwa wares were made with the same length of the neck and the rim of the mouth, as shown here, but later the neck gradually became longer, and the wares became slender with a longer neck.
