Two massive artificial waterways run through the Makimuku site, each five meters wide and one meter deep, their banks reinforced with driven sheet piles. The South Ditch originates near the moat of the Hashihaka Kofun -- Japan's oldest giant keyhole-shaped burial mound -- and runs northwest for over a kilometer. The North Ditch draws from the old Makimuku River and flows southwest. The two channels converge on the grounds of modern Makimuku Elementary School, forming an engineered waterway system estimated at 2,600 meters in total length that ultimately connects to the Yamato River and, through it, to the open sea. This was civil engineering on an urban scale, carried out in an era when most Japanese settlements were clusters of pit dwellings. The site contains few domestic utensils but abundant construction tools, suggesting that much of the labor here was dedicated to building the city itself.

Approximately 150 irregularly shaped circular pits, each about three meters across and one and a half meters deep, are scattered across the site's fringes. Spring water seeps into their bottoms. Inside them, archaeologists found pottery, wooden implements, weaving tools, winnowing baskets, burnt wood, and enormous quantities of rice husks -- the remains of agricultural rituals performed repeatedly over generations. The ritual character of the site runs deep: roughly 30 percent of all excavated remains are classified as ritual-related. Fragments of dotaku bronze bells, boat-shaped and bird-shaped wooden vessels, and discs inscribed with complex arc patterns testify to a ceremonial life of remarkable richness. In 2010, over 2,000 peach pits were discovered, believed to have been used in purification rites. In 2011, excavators found bones from red seabream, mackerel, carp, wild boar, deer, and duck -- the remnants of what appear to be elaborate ritual feasts.

The Hashihaka Kofun, a 280-meter keyhole tomb located about one kilometer south of the main settlement, sits at the heart of one of Japanese archaeology's most heated debates. Some researchers, including archaeologist Shiraishi Taichiro, argue that it could be the tomb of Himiko, the shamaness-queen described in the Chinese Wei Zhi chronicle as ruling over Yamatai in the 3rd century. The circumstantial evidence is intriguing: the tomb dates to roughly Himiko's era, and the Makimuku settlement shows signs of centralized political authority. But skeptics point out that the Wei Zhi describes Himiko's tomb as roughly 100 paces in diameter -- about 30 meters using the short unit of measurement common in the text -- while the Hashihaka Kofun's rear circle alone measures 160 meters across. Others note that the site has yielded no Han-dynasty mirrors or continental swords, the kind of diplomatic gifts one would expect at a court that the Wei Zhi says exchanged envoys with the Chinese kingdom of Wei.

Only a small portion of the Makimuku ruins has been excavated. The site was first identified in 1937 by researcher Minoru Doi as the "Ohta Site," and for decades it attracted little attention. That changed when a plan to build prefectural housing triggered a preliminary survey by the Kashihara Archaeological Institute. The discovery of a canal structure over 200 meters long launched systematic excavation that has continued since 1971. In 2013, more than 100 postholes were found from a 3rd-century building that appears to have been constructed and demolished multiple times -- possibly a palace or ritual hall rebuilt for successive rulers. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 2013. Today, the ruins lie beneath the modern neighborhoods of Sakurai city, their outlines marked by signage and walkways, while Mount Miwa rises to the southeast, the sacred mountain that the ancient inhabitants of Makimuku would have seen every morning, and that some scholars believe was the spiritual anchor of whatever power ruled here.