Minkoo Kim

The process of state formation is a social phenomenon closely connected with a polity’s external relationships. During peer–polity interactions, polities undergo social reorganization as they mutually influence each other. This study examines this process and argues that in central-western Korea, around 200–400 CE, hostile interactions among multiple polities weakened the power of ingroup members to level social differences and increased social complexity. When confronted with unfriendly outgroups, potential rulers could assume different social roles (e.g., diplomat, war leader, or trader) and utilize new social threats to demand and legitimize higher social status. Archaeological data from central-western Korea illustrate the community’s efforts to build a defense system and prepare for war. Autonomous agricultural communities rapidly realigned into a state system in response to external threats, presumably from historically documented hostile groups such as the Lelang commandery and Goguryeo. The decision to oppose neighboring polities likely enhanced the leaders’ ability to consolidate power, while the rulers of the Baekje (also spelled “Paekche”) state could employ various other means for self-aggrandizement throughout its history.

Previous research has reported that Mumun settlements (ca. 1500-300 BCE) in southeastern Korea consisted of multiple house clusters that were basal social units. This study evaluates this claim by inspecting intra-settlement dwelling distribution in sites with more than 40 pithouses. Ripley's K-function and the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) method were implemented to identify pithouse clusters at different spatial scales. Our examination shows that the settlements contained small, primary clusters of ca. 10-40 people, which merged into larger, secondary clusters of fewer than 60 people. Large settlements consisted of multiple secondary clusters. We infer that people aggregated to meet the labor demand of paddy rice cultivation, while simultaneously managing the scalar stress by dividing communities into smaller subgroups. This study suggests that emergent social complexity during the Mumun period relied on factional competition and cooperation and was dependent on the effective integration of discrete social units.

The Mumun period (ca. 1500-1 BC) on the Korean Peninsula represents an incipient agricultural society with a reliance on cereals and legumes. Relatively little is known about the utilization of other types of plants that are considered to be delicacies and condiments. We present archaeobotanical evidence of the storage of perilla seeds dated to ca. 1000 BC. Charring experiments of modern perilla seeds were conducted to examine seed-size changes under different heating temperatures and durations. The experimental results confirmed that the recovered specimens belonged to the cultivated type of Perilla frutescens var. frutescens. The occasional discovery of perilla seeds from earlier settlements suggests that perilla utilization has a deeper history that dates back to ca. 3500 BC. These findings demonstrate that the small-scale production of fragrant vegetables and oilseeds was important alongside the cultivation of carbohydrate-rich crops in prehistoric Korea.

This paper examines temporal changes in grave-good assemblages from a collective tomb and discusses the circumstances under which elites manipulated pooled resources for individual status and power. The need for cooperation and communal labor in agriculture in Naju, Korea, is believed to have suppressed the personal use of public capital. Although status and wealth differences were not clear in the settlement data, some graves contained luxury goods that suggested the operation of external social networks after 450 CE. There was the persistent need for collaborative labor for agricultural production and the bargaining power of the local population presumably remained the same over the study period (ca. 250-650 CE). The observed changes reflect a shift in emphasis among different types of public benefits toward more social demand for security and defense. There was the emergence of new social settings, in which some individuals could demand a large share of the spoils for their diplomatic efforts.

This article compares pottery assemblages from Pungnap Toseong (PT) and 16 adjacent settlements in order to understand the status-related foodways in the Hanseong phase (18 BCE–CE 475) of the Baekje Kingdom in Korea. PT is an earthen-walled site that may have been the first capital town of Baekje. Its residents were arguably of higher status than those of other settlements and, as with other complex societies , are likely to have used food and food-related activities for reinforcing, maintaining, and transforming social relations. The intersite comparison reveals that PT contains more ceramic wares than any other site, especially more storing and serving vessels; abundant storing vessels suggest surplus production mobilized toward the center, while abundant serving vessels are, along with zooarchaeological remains, indicative of rituals and feasts. Researchers have argued that Baekje's elites differentiated themselves from those of lower rank by consuming luxurious foods. This study adds another dimension to the previous discussion by showing that regardless of food quality, the people of PT had a large amount of stored foods and occasionally consumed foods in commensal contexts in order to maintain their social alliances and reinforce the hierarchy.

This article reviews published excavation reports of the Chulmun settlements in South Korea and explores the changes in demographic structure over the period of ca. 8000–1500 BC. The Chulmun people were sedentary hunter–gatherer–fishers with an intensified use of marine resources, food storage, and a low level of plant cultivation. Archaeological evidence for social differentiation is very scarce in this period and social relationships are assumed to have been egalitarian. In an attempt to explain the lack of articulated social differentiation, this study examines settlement patterns to reveal considerable temporal variation. The number of settlements increased dramatically in 4000–3000 BC, presumably under the influence of plant cultivation and/or an intensified use of wild resources, but then decreased in 3000–1500 BC. Even at the zenith of the hypothetical population growth, most settlements were small scale with only a few pit houses and archaeological evidence for large population aggregation, which would have promoted interpersonal interactions, is rare. The uninterrupted presence of shell middens shows that coastal resources continued to be exploited until the end of the Chulmun period, while some sites were newly established in small remote islands. The current investigation suggests that although population growth occurred at one point, a number of interrelated factors, including a low level of aggregation and the subsequent population decrease and/or relocation, acted against the institutionalization of social inequality in the Chulmun period.

Rice has been an important cultivated crop in Korea since c. 1500 BC, but in historical times it was a luxury food too valuable for consumption by the farmers who produced it. It was widely used as a form of currency and for tax payments. Analysis of plant remains from Sangdong-dong and Songgukri, two Bronze Age settlements of the early first millennium BC, however, reveals that rice was not the preserve of elites in that period. The situation changed with the state formation during the first three centuries AD, when rice consumption became increasingly restricted. Thus in Korea rice was not initially cultivated as a luxury food, but became so through social and political change.

Abstract: This study examines patterns of plant utilization at the prehistoric Sannai Maruyama site in northeastern Japan. Macrobotanical data were collected from waterlogged midden layers dating to the latter half of the Early Jomon Period (approximately 5900 to 5350 cal BP). ...