Archeology allows modern humankind to investigate even those eras before the advent of historical record keeping. In the study of Japanese culture and civilization, a great deal of development took place before the Japanese began to write and keep records. In fact archeologists have identified three different cutural styles emerging during this prehistoric time period, the Yayoi, the Jomon and the Kofun. 

Recently several important prehistoric sites have been uncovered. Two of the best documented on the Internet are those found at Sannai Maruyama in Aomori Prefecture and in the Asuka area near modern Nara. 

Sannai Maruyama was a Jomon Era village inhabited for over 1500 years beginning around 3500 BCE ("Before the Common Era"). Naomichi Fujikawa recounts some of the excitement surrounding the first discovery of this archeological site in 1992 while Toshiyuki Abe tells about some of the site's most important finds. A series of papers and essays discussing the site are also available at another Internet location devoted to the ongoing exploration of this important archeological find. 

Between 592 and 710 a number of palaces were built in the Asuka area to house both Japanese emperors and empresses and their governments. Individual palaces, such as the one at Fujiwara-no-miya, as well as Buddhist temples from the period have been excavated and investigated by archeologists; their discussions shed light on the beginnings of the Japanese imperial state and the influences of Chinese culture on early court and religious life in Japan. Various poems quoted from the Manyoshu, Japan's earliest poetic anthology, making reference to Asuka palaces and other famous sites also are included in this exceptional on-line resource guide. 

In the fourteenth century the town of Kusado Sengen appeared at the mouth of the Ashida River in what is today Hiroshima Prefecture. The village remained until the early sixteenth century an important location on the coast of the Inland Sea. In the twentieth century the ruins of the village were excavated over a two decade period; pottery, wooden objects of various sorts, coins and even carpenters' tools associated with village life here were unearthed and together help us to understand what life must have been like for people alive centuries earlier. Yasuki Suzuki tells us about the town and how the artifacts uncovered there help us to understand the town and its inhabitants.