Storage Practices, Intensive Agriculture, and Social Change in Mumun Pottery Period Korea, 2903–2450 Calibrated Years B.P.

• Main Author: Bale, Martin Thomas
• Other Authors: Crawford, Gary
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: archaeology; storage strategies; Korea; settlements; households; socio-political complexity; East Asia; Mumun Pottery Period; 0324
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/31685

Storage is an important part of the background in many archaeological studies of the origins of early complex societies. Yet, a problem with many of these studies of formation and change in complex societies is that the social significance of storage is assumed rather than demonstrated. In this dissertation, I examine the practice of storage in three regions of prehistoric Korea and its relationship with socio-political structural changes. I analyze the distribution of storage artifacts and features such as pits, large-capacity pottery, and raised-floor structures in the context of their spatial relationships with other archaeological features and elite precincts at the household and settlement levels. The archaeological features used for storage in the Mumun Pottery Period (3390-2290 calibrated years B.P.) changed in form diachronically and show that underground pit storage remained constant during the period of study and that clandestine storage was not completely replaced by above-ground visible storage. Elite actors seem to have had some influence on the nature of storage in at least two central settlements, Daepyeong I and II and Songguk-ri, but appear to have been unable to completely control stored agricultural surplus in the two settlements and had little control over the surrounding areas.