This study focuses on changing the settlement patterns of the Late Bronze Age around Nam-gang River in South Korea. Songguk-ri culture is an important criterion to classify the Early and Late Bronze Age because it includes the whole change of material...
This study focuses on changing the settlement patterns of the Late Bronze Age around Nam-gang River in South Korea. Songguk-ri culture is an important criterion to classify the Early and Late Bronze Age because it includes the whole change of material cultures like houses and potteries. So many discussions about the settlement changes with social complexity have been made.
However, these discussions have mainly been in the southwestern region of Korea, not in the southeastern region. In the southeastern region, it has mainly focused on the typological changes so the settlement changes and various possibilities of social complexity have not clearly been presented.
This paper tries to clarify settlement changes in the southeastern region, especially Nam-gang River Area where Songguk-ri culture started very early. So, it comprehensively analyses the types of the Songguk-ri type houses, associated potteries in the houses, overlapping relationships of the houses and C14 data.
The result of the analyses, most square-shaped and circle-shaped houses are associated with the same internal type, an inner pithole with outer postholes. And the associated potteries in each house types are analyzed that any associated pottery types cannot be specified with any house types. But if the region is divided into two parts, the main stream and the branches, the overlapped houses and C-14 dating data show that the circle-shaped house can occur after square-shaped houses in the branches. So the Late Bronze Age in Nam-gang River area can be divided into two stages. The I-stage is the single stage occurring only square-shaped houses, and the II-stage is the parallel stage which square- shaped houses and circle-shaped houses occurring together.
With GIS analysis, square-shaped houses are mainly settled along the main stream area in the I-stage. Then, circle-shaped houses started to settle in the outskirt area of the settlement in the main stream area and to spread in the new settlements in the branches in the II-stage.
This result is differentiated from the previous studies which have to explain the dramatic changes of settlements and population. Instead, this study shows the development of the settlement and its system. In the second stage of the Late Bronze Age, as the settlement is spread to the branches, the settlement system and social complexity can be advanced simultaneously.