Here’s a quick question that has been bugging me at work lately:
I do a lot of translation work for a city’s tourism department. This city happens to have a lot of archaeological sites from the Initial to Middle Jomon periods (from about 3500-5000 years ago). The word used in Japanese for these is iseki, which is often translated to “ruins”.
However, to my Joe Q. Public ear “ruins” brings up images of places like the Colosseum of Rome or Tintagel Castle: a historical site in serious disrepair but still standing to some extent.
These Jomon period sites have nothing left standing. They are mostly buried under centuries upon millennia of earth and only basic foundations, fire pits, and artifacts like tools and jewelry remain.
Can these still be called ruins? Is there some other archaeological term for such a site other than “archaeological site”? Remains, maybe? Any archaeologists out there that can give me the straight dopeamajigger? Could I have anymore question marks in this paragraph?
To me the word “ruins” does bring to mind something that’s still standing, although not necessarily monumental in scale; it could be a low wall or pedestal. Nevertheless I think it would also be correct for buried foundations and such.
I wouldn’t use “remains”; it may be taken to mean the skeletons or bodies of people.
Some in-place remains of human settlement, but not all, come under the general technical term of “feature” (also defined as a component of an archaeological site that cannot be (easily) removed from the site. The antonym would be “artifact”. But that refers to individual elements not the collective.
Generally, the terms “site” or “settlement” are used - “ruin” I mostly associate with destroyed or decayed, often stone, buildings, FWIW - either places that met natural disaster or war, or else were abandoned and decayed but remain partialy standing. Places that were built over, inundated or that sort of thing I’d not call ruins. I’d call the Jōmon remains “settlement sites”, not “ruins”, myself.
“Site”, “feature”, or “settlement” might be fine if it’s already clear that you’re talking in an archaeological context, but it looks to me like that’s not the case here. If a tour guide told me “And down this way we have some interesting settlements”, I would assume that they meant places where people are currently living. If the guide instead said “ruins”, I might still get the wrong idea, but I’d at least be thinking along the right track.