Jeulmun pottery period - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Jeulmun Pottery Period is an archaeological era in Korean prehistory

Prehistoric Korea

The Prehistoric Korea is the era of human existence in the Korean Peninsula for which written records did not exist. It, however, constitutes the greatest segment of the Korean past and is the major object of study in the disciplines of archaeology, geology, and...

that dates to approximately 8000-1500 BC.. It is named after the decorated pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage consistently over the above period, especially 4000-2000 BC. Jeulmun (Hangul

Hangul

Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...

: 즐문, Hanja

Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...

: 櫛文) means "Comb-patterned". A boom in the archaeological excavations of Jeulmun Period sites since the mid-1990s has increased knowledge about this important formative period in the prehistory of East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

.

The Jeulmun is significant for the origins of plant cultivation and sedentary societies in the Korean peninsula

Korean Peninsula

The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. It extends southwards for about 684 miles from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan to the south, and the Yellow Sea to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water.Until the end of...

. This period has sometimes been labelled as the "Korean Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

", but since intensive agriculture and evidence of European-style "Neolithic" lifestyle is sparse at best, such terminology is misleading.

The Jeulmun was a period of hunting, gathering, and small-scale cultivation of plants . Archaeologists sometimes refer to this life-style pattern as "broad-spectrum hunting-and-gathering

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

Incipient Jeulmun

The origins of the Jeulmun are not well known, but raised-clay pattern Yunggimun pottery (Hangul

Hangul

: 융기문토기; Hanja

Hanja

: 隆起文土器) appear at southern sites such as Gosan-ni in Jeju-do

Jeju-do

Jeju-do is the only special autonomous province of South Korea, situated on and coterminous with the country's largest island. Jeju-do lies in the Korea Strait, southwest of Jeollanam-do Province, of which it was a part before it became a separate province in 1946...

Island and Ubong-ni on the seacoast in Ulsan

Ulsan

Ulsan , officially the Ulsan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's seventh largest metropolis with a population of over 1.1 million. It is located in the south-east of the country, neighboring Busan to the south and facing Gyeongju to the north and the Sea of Japan to the east.Ulsan is the...

. Some archaeologists describe this range of time as the "Incipient Jeulmun period" and suggest that the Gosan-ni pottery dates to 10,000 BP . Samples of the pottery were radiocarbon dated, and although one result is consistent with the argument that pottery emerged at very early date (i.e. 10,180±65 BP [AA-38105]), other dates are somewhat later . If the earlier dating holds true, Yunggimun pottery from Gosan-ni would be, along with central and southern China, the Japanese Archipelago

Japanese Archipelago

The , which forms the country of Japan, extends roughly from northeast to southwest along the northeastern coast of the Eurasia mainland, washing upon the northwestern shores of the Pacific Ocean...

, and the Russian Far East

Russian Far East

Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...

, among a group of the oldest known pottery

Pottery

in world prehistory

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

. Kuzmin suggests that more absolute dating

Absolute dating

Absolute dating is the process of determining an approximate computed age in archaeology and geology. Some scientists prefer the terms chronometric or calendar dating, as use of the word "absolute" implies an unwarranted certainty and precision...

is needed to gain a better perspective on this notion .

Early Jeulmun

The Early Jeulmun period (c. 6000-3500 BC) is characterized by deep-sea fishing, hunting, and small semi-permanent settlements with pit-houses. Examples of Early Jeulmun settlements include Seopohang, Amsa-dong

Amsa-dong

Amsa-dong is a dong, neighbourhood of Gangdong-gu in Seoul, South Korea. The dong is well-known for the Amsa-dong Preshistoric Settlement Site in which Neolithic remains were excavated after a large number of diagonal-line patterned earthenware underneath the earth were accidentally uncovered by a...

, and Osan-ri . Radiocarbon evidence from coastal shellmidden sites such as Ulsan

Ulsan

Sejuk-ri, Dongsam-dong

Dongsam-dong Shell Midden

Dongsam-dong Shell Midden or Shell Mound is located on the west coast of Yeong-do Island in Dongsam-dong, Yeongdo-gu, Busan Metropolitan City, the Republic of Korea....

, and Ga-do Island indicates that shellfish were exploited, but many archaeologists maintain that shellmiddens (or shellmound sites) did not appear until the latter Early Jeulmun .

Middle Jeulmun

Choe and Bale estimate that at least 14 Middle Jeulmun period (c. 3500-2000 BC) sites have yielded evidence of cultivation in the form of carbonized plant remains and agricultural stone tools . For example, Crawford and Lee, using AMS

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.It is used for determining masses of particles, for determining the elemental composition of a sample or molecule, and for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and...

dating techniques, directly dated a domesticated foxtail millet

Foxtail millet

Foxtail millet is the second most widely planted species of millet, and the most important in East Asia. It has the longest history of cultivation among the millets, having been grown in China since sometime in the sixth millennium BC...

(Setaria italica ssp. italica) seed from the Dongsam-dong Shellmidden site to the Middle Jeulmun . Another example of Middle Jeulmun cultivation is found at Jitam-ri (Chitam-ni) in North Korea

North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

. A pit-house at Jitam-ri yielded several hundred grams of some carbonized cultigen that North Korean archaeologists state is millet

Millet

The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...

. However, not all archaeologists accept the grains as domesticated millet because it was gathered out of context in an unsystematic way, only black-and-white photos of the find exist, and the original description is in Korean

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

only.

Cultivation was likely a supplement to a subsistence regime that continued to heavily emphasize deep-sea fishing, shellfish gathering, and hunting. "Classic Jeulmun" or Bitsalmunui pottery (Hangul

Hangul

: 빗살무늬토기) in which comb-patterning, cord-wrapping, and other decorations extend across the entire outer surface of the vessel, appeared at the end of the Early Jeulmun and is found in West-central and South-coastal Korea in the Middle Jeulmun.

Late Jeulmun

The subsistence pattern of the Late Jeulmun period (c. 2000-1500 BC) is associated with a de-emphasis on exploitation of shellfish, and the settlement pattern registered the appearance of interior settlements such as Sangchon-ri (see Daepyeong

Daepyeong

Daepyeong is the name of a complex prehistoric archaeological site located in the Nam River valley near Jinju in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea...

) and Imbul-ri. Lee suggests that environmental stress on shellfish populations and the movement of people into the interior prompted groups to become more reliant on cultivated plants in their diets . The subsistence system of the interior settlements was probably not unlike that of the incipient Early Mumun pottery period

Mumun pottery period

The Mumun pottery period is an archaeological era in Korean prehistory that dates to approximately 1500-300 BC This period is named after the Korean name for undecorated or plain cooking and storage vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage over the entire length of the period, but...

(c. 1500-1250 BC), when small-scale shifting cultivation

Shifting cultivation

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned. This system often involves clearing of a piece of land followed by several years of wood harvesting or farming, until the soil loses fertility...

("slash-and-burn") was practiced in addition to a variety of other subsistence strategies. The Late Jeulmun is roughly contemporaneous with Lower Xiajiadian culture

Lower Xiajiadian culture

The Lower Xiajiadian culture is an archaeological culture in Northeast China, found mainly in southeastern Inner Mongolia, northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China. Subsistence was based on millet farming supplemented with animal husbandry and hunting. Archaeological sites have yielded the...

in Liaoning

Liaoning

' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the northeast of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "辽" , a name taken from the Liao River that flows through the province. "Níng" means "peace"...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. Archaeologists have suggested that Bangudae

Bangudae Petroglyphs

The Bangudae Petroglyphs are located in Daegok-ri, Ulsan, South Korea. This site of substantial engraved rock art was rediscovered in 1971 and was designated as the 285th National Treasure of South Korea on June 23, 1995. The petroglyphs sit in an isolated forested area almost completely enclosed...

and Cheonjeon-ri, a substantial group of petroglyph panels in Ulsan, may date to this sub-period, but this is the subject of some debate.

Kim Jangsuk suggests that the hunter-gatherer-cultivators of the Late Jeulmun were gradually displaced from their "resource patches" by a new group with superior slash-and-burn cultivation technology and who migrated south with Mumun or undecorated (Hangeul: 무문토기; Hanja: 無文土器) pottery . Kim explains that the pattern of land use practiced by the Mumun pottery users, the dividing up of land into sets of slash-and-burn fields, eventually encroached on and cut off parts of hunting grounds used by Jeulmun pottery users.

Incipient Jeulmun

Early Jeulmun

Middle Jeulmun

Late Jeulmun

Further reading

See also