청동기사회에서 철기사회로의 진행과정 — 집단지향적인 사회구조에서 개인지향적인 사회구조로의 변화과정과 이데올로기의 전환 —

Abstract

In the southern Korean peninsula, the material culture of the Early Iron Age, which appeared in c. 4th century BCE shows the quite different aspects from the prior the Bronze Age culture. In order to explain such cultural discontinuity between two periods, some archaeologists who applied the concept presented by Renfrew in 1973, suggested that the latter was the individualizing chiefdom and that the former was the group-oriented chiefdom. However, recent studies have indicated that the culture of the Early Iron Age co-exited quite long time with the culture of the Songguk-ri stage. On the basis of the excavated data, this article aims to reveal that the ideology legtimating the exclusive political power of the social elite might not be disseminated without the resistance of the social components in the southern Korean peninsula. The material culture of this period shows the regional differences. The pit toms contained with plentiful bronze prestige goods have not been discovered in Gyeongsang-do province to date; rather, the extra-large scale burial platform of the dolmen, which is one of the traditional burial types in the Bronze Age, were built. Judging from the fact that potsherds with round clay band rim were recovered from some settlement sites and that the dolmens with the extra-large scale platform were not associated with bronze prestige goods, the construction of the such megalithic monuments would be one of the method to defend the existing ideology, which underpinned the equal social structure, selected by the community members, rather than be the indicator of the advent of the leader who possessed the exclusive political power. On the other hand, the burial goods recovered from the pit tombs in Jeolla-do and Chungcheong-do provinces suggest that their builders attempted to privatize the means of production and the existing ideology. However, the cultural discontinuity between the Early Iron Age and the Proto-Three Kingdoms Period in these regions implies the possibility to happen the ideological conflicts between the group who aimed to change the society towards more hierarchical structure and who wanted to maintain the equal social relationship.