AN EMIC INVESTIGATION ON THE TRAJECTORY OF THE SONGGUKRI CULTURE DURING THE MIDDLE MUMUN PERIOD (2900 – 2400 CAL. BP) IN KOREA: A GIS AND LANDSCAPE APPROACH by HA BEOM KIM A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2019 DISSERATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Ha Beom Kim Title: An Emic Investigation on the Trajectory of the Songgukri Culture during the Middle Mumun Period (2900 – 2400 cal. BP) in Korea: a GIS and Landscape Approach This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Anthropology by: Gyoung-Ah Lee Chairperson Jon Erlandson Core Member Stephen Dueppen Core Member Henry Luan Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded 2019. ii © 2019 Ha Beom Kim This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Ha Beom Kim Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology December 2019 Title: An Emic Investigation on the Trajectory of the Songgukri Culture during the Middle Mumun Period (2900 – 2400 cal. BP) in Korea: a GIS and Landscape Approach This study embraces an emic view on the trajectory of the Songgukri culture in Korea. It examines how past people may have experienced the archaeological phenomenon currently understood as the Songgukri transition. That is, when the Songgukkri culture emerges and expands to major parts of the southern Korean peninsula. This phenomenological aspect of the Songugkri transition has been investigated by examining how Songgukri people maintained a sense of common belonging through visibility and movement patterns in their landscape. The study focuses on visibility and movement because the analysis of these two landscape elements can reveal the patterns of perceptive association shared among the Songgukri people. Through a series of GIS-based analyses, my study abstracts the Songgukri settler’s landscape experiences quantitatively, and then compares them by regions. The result of my analysis yields a new synthesis on the process of the Songgukri expansion. It reveals that the intensity of Songgukri expansion varied by region. A multitude of factors, including the presence of natural barriers, the landscape preference by Songgukri people, and the mode of cultural transmission, are proposed as responsible for the regional variations of the Songgukri expansion. My study discusses how these factors may have influenced the experiences of the Songgukri migrants and the iv indigenous Early Mumun population during the Songgukri expansion, and explores why these regional variabilities in the expansion pattern have been observed. My synthesis of Songgukri expansion proposes an emic understanding of the Songgukri transition. The Songgukri culture may not have been a single homogenous cultural entity. Rather there were diverse communal regional groups, which came to accept certain elements of the Songgukri material cultures for different reasons. My study suggests that the archaeological phenomenon recognized as the Songgukri transition may not be characterized as one singular process applicable to all regions at the same time. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Ha Beom Kim GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley DEEGRES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Anthropology, 2019, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Anthropology, 2014, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology, 2011, University of California – Berkeley AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: East Asian Archaeology Geographical Information System Computational Analysis Complex Societies Archaeobotany PUBLICATIONS: 2019 Habeom Kim, Christopher Bone, and Gyoung-Ah Lee. Landscapes shared by visibility: a Case Study on the Settlement Relationship of the Songgukri Culture, Korea. Archaeological and Anthropological Science. In-Press. 2019 Li Liu, Xingcan Chen, Henry Wright, Hong Xu, Yongqiang Li, Guoliang Chen, Haitao Zhao, Habeom Kim, Gyoung-Ah Lee. Rise and fall of complex societies in the Yiluo region, North China: The spatial and temporal changes. Quaternary International, vol 521. Pg. 4-15. 2018 Habeom Kim. Archaeobotanical Analysis at the Jungdo Site, Chuncheon. Hanggang Journal of Archaeology, vol 14. pp 93-102. [In Korean] 2014 Habeom Kim. Analysis of Plant Remains at Incheon Guwoldong Site. In: Excavation Report #47: Incheon Guwoldong Site. Hangang Institute of Cultural Heritage. [In Korean] vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Gyoung-ah Lee, for her long and continuous support of my studies during the Ph.D. program. I owe my scholarly and personal growth to her dedication and guidance, which always helped me to propel myself forward through the times of ups and downs in graduate school. Along with my advisor, I would also like to thank the rest of my thesis committee, Prof. Jon Erlandson, Prof. Stephen Dueppen, and Prof. Henry Luan, and my research mentor, Prof. Chris Bone, for their insightful comments and encouragement throughout the long process of completing my doctoral research. Their incisive and critical questions always motivated me to seek new knowledge and perspective that lie beyond my comfort zones. The research I completed could not have been possible without them. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Hopil Yun at the Sangju Museum, and Geuntae Park at the Jeju Archaeological Institute, who helped me during many seasons of archaeological site survey in Korea. The survey I was able to complete, thanks to their time, effort, and kindness, have been instrumental to the formation of this research project. I also wish to express my appreciation to Dr. Hongjong Lee, Dr. Junho Son, and Sunghee Park at the Korea University, and Dr. Sook-Chung Shin at the Hangang Institute of Cultural Heritage for providing me the opportunity to collect the archaeological site data used in this study. I also thank all of my friends, fellow colleagues, and teachers for their friendship and encouragement throughout the years in graduate school. I particularly wish to thank my past and current labmates at the University of Oregon, Dr. Rory Walsh, Hyunsoo Lee, vii Yuan Fang, and Angelica Kneisly, and Prof. Junko Habu at the University of California – Berkeley. My research was supported by the Korean Studies Promotion Service/Academy of Korean Studies under the Laboratory Program Grant for Korean Studies (AKS-2015-Lab- 2250001). Additional research funding from the National Science Foundation under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Program Fellowship (1614433), the Freeman Foundation, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences have been important for the completion of this research. I wish to show my deep appreciation to all organizations and their personnel for their contributions to my research. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents for supporting me throughout the long years of graduate school. I am blessed by their nurture and love to be the person and scholar I am today. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 The Problem: Songgukri Culture and People .................................................... 1 Method of Investigation: Phenomenological Approach and GIS ...................... 6 Data of the Study: Songgukri Settlement and Regions .................................... 11 Organization of the Dissertation ...................................................................... 18 II. ARCHAEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND ............................................................ 20 The Chronology of the Mumun Period (ca. 3500 – 2100 cal. BP) .................. 20 Songgukri Culture: an Overview ..................................................................... 24 Songgukri Material and Feature Assemblage .................................................. 26 Songgukri Pit-house .................................................................................... 26 Songgukri Pottery ........................................................................................ 29 Songgukri Lithic Tools ................................................................................ 31 Songgukri Bronze Objects .......................................................................... 36 Songgukri Burial Features ........................................................................... 37 Songgukri Settlement ....................................................................................... 43 Songgukri Settlement Relationship .................................................................. 45 Songgukri Origin Debate ................................................................................. 47 III. VISIBILITY ANALYSIS IN THE MID-LOWER REACH OF THE GEUM RIVER REGION .................................................................................................. 51 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 51 Material and Method .......................................................................................