Fukiishi

(葺石 or 葺き石 "roofing stone") were a means of covering burial chambers and burial mounds during the kofun period of Japan (250–538). Stones collected from riverbeds were affixed to the slopes of raised kofun and other burial chambers. They are considered to have descended from forms used in Yayoi-period tumuli. They are common in the early and mid-Kofun periods, but most late Kofun-period tumuli do not have them. Tombs covered with fukiishi appear sporadically in Western Japan from the mid-Yayoi period and continue into the Kofun period. Fukiishi are thought to be one element of the characteristics of the period of kofun at the time that they were making their first appearance; what are thought of as the oldest examples of what was to lead the generally fixed form are seen at Hashihaka kofun and the presumed slightly older Hokeno-yama kofun in the city of Sakurai in Nara Prefecture. Neither fukiishi nor haniwa accompany mounds from before regularization such as at the Makimuku keyhole-shaped kofun group. The (貼石) seen at the Yosumi Tosshutsu funkyūbo ("four corner projections type grave mound") in the San'in region in Western Japan are often put forth as an ancestor of . The perimeter of the foot of kofun No. 3 of Nishidani kofungun in Izumo in Shimane Prefecture is completely covered with . The burial mound at the Tatetsuki archaeological site in the city of Sōja in Okayama Prefecture is surrounded with rows of stones; such examples are widely seen in the San'in and the nearby San'yō regions, where examples of burial mounds demarcated by stacks of stone walls are also seen. In his report on an excavation in 1915 on mound No. 21 of Saitobaru kofungun burial mound group in what is now the city of Saito in Miyazaki Prefecture, historian Ryū Imanishi titled an entry ("surface roofing stones") in which he described the condition of the in a ground plan and cross-section. The term came into use as an archaeological term largely due to the influence of Kenji Takahashi's book ("Kofun and ancient culture", 1922).