Radiocarbon and archaeology in japan and korea: What has changed because of the yayoi dating controversy?

Abstract

Since the sensational 2003 announcement that pushed the start of the Yayoi period back by 500 yr, archaeologists working on 1st millennium BC material from northeast Asia have had to switch from the older short chronology to a new long chronology. However, this change need not apply to the entire northeast Asian region as China's chronology is tied to written records. The timeline of the Korean peninsula, intermediate between the Chinese and Japanese ones, needs to be reexamined. The chronology of the 1st millennium BC in the Korean peninsula is still in dispute, in part because many of the radiocarbon dates lack clear archaeological contexts. This paper shows that a reliable typological relationship observed in archaeological materials existed at this time linking northeast Asia from China to Japan. This paper includes absolute dates based on the initial AMS 14C measurements of charred crops from South Korean sites. © 2010 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona.