The chulmun period of korea: Current findings and discourse on korean neolithic culture

Abstract

The Chulmun culture, documented by over 870 sites across the Korean Peninsula, presents a long-standing Neolithic cultural niche construction from the early Holocene. This chapter draws an inter-woven narrative on cultural, social, and economic changes by reviewing current data and debates on the Chulmun time frame, emergence and subsequent development of food production, social organization, settlement patterns, exchange networks, and ideological, ritual practice. Recent findings of vessels on Cheju Island push the onset of the Neolithic to as early as 10,000 BP, and a series of well-defined carbon dates put the boundary with the subsequent Bronze (or Mumun) period around 3500 cal. BP. Foxtail and broomcorn millets, crops of the Yellow River origin, reached as far as the southeastern peninsula during the Initial Neolithic phase, not much later than their initial appearance in the early Neolithic Xinglongwa culture of northeast China. A wide spread of crops and materials documents long-distance relations within and beyond Korea, particularly visible in the Middle Neolithic phase. An ebb and flow of settlement sizes and numbers throughout the Neolithic generate several assumptions on population movements. The presence of goods obtained through long-distance trades and symbolic ornaments in selective burials indicate at least the recognition of an achieved status distinction of sorts. Mortuary rituals may indicate both marine-related cult and agriculturally oriented communal ceremony.