The Ōfune Site (大船遺跡, Ōfune iseki) is an archaeological site consisting of a series of large shell middens and the remains of an adjacent settlement from the Jōmon period.
The Ōfune Site was a community with over 100 pit dwellings, including smaller family homes and some larger homes that were inhabited from 3500 BC to 2000 BC. The dates of the site's habitation correspond to the early and middle Jōmon period of Japanese history. The community was positioned alongside the Pacific Ocean, enabling easy access to fishing and whaling grounds and providing an avenue for the site's people to trade extensively with other communities in the Tōhoku region. Pottery from the Tōhoku region and central Hokkaido was found in the sites burial mound, providing basis for the site's function as a trade center.
The Ōfune Site was discovered during surveying work in 1996. Initial discoveries included a large pit dwelling, embankments, and a storage pit.
The Ōfune Site is one of the Jōmon Archaeological Sites in Hokkaidō, Northern Tōhoku, and other regions, a group of Jōmon period archaeological sites in Hokkaido and northern Tōhoku that was recommended by Japan in 2020 for inclusion to the UNESCO World Heritage List, under criteria iii and iv. The submission currently resides on the Tentative List.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.